HOUSES
FOR CANADIANS
A Study of Housing Problems
in the Toronto Area
By HUMPHREY CARVER, A.R.LB.A.
Lecturer and Research Associate
School of Social Work
University of Toronto
Toronto: UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS: 1948
COPYRIGHT, CANADA, 1948 f
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS
PRINTED IN CANADA
London: Geoffrey Cumberlege
Oxford University Press
FOREWORD
Tus study arose out of the concern of the Reconstruction Council
of Toronto (now the Civic Advisory Council) that there should
be careful and impartial examination of the factors which created
a serious postwar housing crisis in the city and of ways and'means
of solving the problem. It was recognized that besides the im-
mediate emergency there was also a chronic problem, towards
the solution of which research could make its greatest contri-
bution:
` In 1945, at the request of the Reconstruction Council, the
School of Social Work of the University of Toronto undertook the
responsibility of organizing and sponsoring a series of pertinent
housing studies. A three-year programme was projected, to be
financed by grants from the City of Toronto, the Ontario Depart-
ment of Planning and Development, and the Dominion Central
Mortgage and Housing Corporation. The School was fortunate in
obtaining the services of Mr. Humphrey Carver, who had been a
leading Canadian student of housing for many years, to direct
these studies. Mr. Carver began his work early in 1946, directly
after release from the Canadian Army, with which he had served
during the war.
This study, the major result of the programme, will speak for
itself. We hope that it will throw a good deal of light on the
complex of forces and factors which create a “housing problem”
not only in Toronto but also in other Canadian cities. Various
other reports have been prepared by Mr. Carver and his assistants,
some of which have been published or will be published and
others of which have been submitted, through the Civic Advisory
Council, to the Mayor and Board of Control of Toronto. During
v
vi Foreword
1948-49 some further work will be undertaken, to complete the
original “Toronto Metropolitan Housing Research Project”; and
in future the School hopes to make further contributions to the
study of housing in Canada and to professional training. for
housing administration.
I wish to pay tribute to the Civic Advisory Council of Toronto
for initiating this enterprise, and for assisting Mr. Carver materi-
ally through the advice and encouragement of its Housing Com-
mittee; to the. City of Toronto, the Ontario Department of. Plan-
“ning and Development, and the Central Mortgage and Housing
Corporation for their generous financial support; and to President
Sidney Smith and the Board of Governors of the University of
Toronto for their recognition of this as an appropriate under-
taking for a University School.
Harry M. CASSIDY
Director, School of Social Work
University of Toronto
July, 1948
CONTENTS
Chapter One.
Chapter Two.
Chapter Three.
Chapter Four.
A Decent HOME l
For Every FAMILY =. % rs |
Houses, Families, and Money
The National Housing Pokey
Housing and Health
The Characteristics of Good Housing
A PROGRAMME
FOR METROPOLITAN TORONTO 25
The Number of Houses Needed
The Number of Replacements Needed
The Disposition of New Housing
The Lack of Rental Housing
House Costs 48
The Cost of a 5,000 Unit Annual Programme
The Components of Housing Costs
The Components of Construction Costs
The Nature of the Building Industry
THE COMMUNITYS CAPACITY
TO Pay ror Housing -70
Distribution of Income
Proportion of Income Actually Spent on Housing
Rents and the Family Budget
The Social and Economic Framework of a
Housing Programme
vii
viii
Chapter Five.
Chapter Six.
Appendix
Index
Contents
Housing SUPPLY
AND ORGANIZATION 92
Theory of the Housing Market : l
Subsidies to Supplement the Housing Market
The Local Housing Authority
Rental Housing and Local Government
THE ULTIMATE
Hovusine PROBLEM | 121
‘Tapas I to XXVI. 129
153
TABLES IN. THE TEXT.
. Gross Monthly Cost of ‘a $7,000 Housing Unit
Monthly Cost of 7, 000 Hones Unit to Ovmer-Occupant
Prices of Lots for Houses Built Through’ National Housing
Act, Toronto Metropolitan Area, lose
D.: Cash Contribations of Borrowers. “Loans Måde“ Under
National oue. Act 1944. Toronto phd er ara
_ 1946 Sior gei i
. Costs of Constructing Representative Types o of Dwelling i in
__ the Toronto Area; January; 1947-- 07
F. Labour Cost as a Percentage of the Total Value of Various
i Clässes`of Finished Manufactured Products. `- >
r Monthly Cost: of Maintaining ‘Standard of Living’ Set k
" Toronto Welfare Council (Excluding Rent)
. Annual. Incomes Required to Support Families. at Toronto --
Welfare Council’s Standard of Living..
50
51
55
60
65
81
+ 82
TABLES IN THE: APPENDIX
I.
HI.
IV.
VI.
VII.
VII
IX.
Relations Between Health and Housing Conditions,
Toronto, 1934
Recorded Changes in Health of Population Moved
_. from Slum Conditions to Modern. Housing.
Increases of Population and Housing 1931-1945
‘Toronto Metropolitan Area
Sub-Standard Dwellings in Canadian Cities . as
Recorded by the 1941 Census
Progress of Housing Programme, Toronto Metropolitan
Area, 1931-1947
Costs of Building Materials ‘and of Living in Canada
Value of Residential: Construction and Total Con-
struction, Toronto Metropolitan Area, 1934-1947
Types of Residential Accommodation Built in the
Toronto Metropolitan Area During 1945, 1946, and
1947
Type of Construction Used All Housing Completed in
Toronto Metropolitan Area 1945 and 1946
Amounts and Values of Materials Required in the
Construction of One Representative Dwelling Unit,
Single-Unit House Type with Wood Frame. and Wood
Siding, Toronto, 1947
129
130
181
182
188
134
134
135
135
136
Tables in the Appendix
XI.
XII (A).
xi (B).
XII.
C XIV.
XV.
XVI.
XVIL
XVIL.
XIX.
Amounts and Values of Materials Required in the
Construction of One Representative Dwelling Unit,
Single-Unit House Type with Solid Brick, Toronto,
1947
Component Costs of Constructing Dwellings
Component Costs of Constructing Dwellings
Distribution. of Incomes of Families in the Toronto .
Metropolitan Area, 1941
Estimated Distribution of Income-Tax Payers, Ontario,
1946 .
Rent Capacity of Families in the Toronto Metropolitan
Area, 1941
Rents Paid by Low-Income Families Compared with
Theoretical Capacity, 1941.
Rents Paid by Middle-Income Families Compared
with Theoretical Capacity, 1941
Monthly Rents Paid, in Relation to Size of Family,
1941 Toronto City, Suburban Area, and Whole Metro-
politan Area
Percentages of Tenant Families Paying More Than
Proportionate Rent, at Three Income Levels and Three
Family Sizes, Toronto Area
Monthly Budget for Family of Five in Toronto (Man,
Woman, Boy 6, Girl 10, Boy 12)
Net Family Incomes After Deduction of Income Tax
and Addition of Family Allowances
xi
188
140
141
142
142
143
143
144
144
145
146
147
XXII.
XXII.
XXIV.
“XXVI.
‘Fables in the Appendix
Net -Monthly. Rent Capacity’ as One-Fifth of. Net.
Income; Standard. of Living- ‘Maren, and l Renoa
Rent Capacity:
Toronto Metropolitan Families: a Frequency
by Income-and Family Size ` i
Distribution of Toronto : Metropolitan Families on the
Basis óf a Total of 200,000 Families
Tadidés of Nàtional Income, , Building Costs, and
Volume of Residential Construction, Canada, 1919 to
1941
SA of Rent Systems Used by Local Housing
Authorities in the United States
148
149
149
150
151
PREFACE
THE post-war development of Canada is proceeding at such a pace
that any statistical presentation is obsolete the day it is published.
Particularly is this true of housing. The volume of housing pro-
duction continues to astonish us. So far, in a condition of extra-
ordinary national prosperity, there have been enough purchasers
with money in their pockets to keep the house-builders busy. But
we cannot expect this to continue indefinitely and meanwhile the
miseries of overcrowding do not become any less evident. _
_ In preparing an analytical study of this kind it is necessary to
incorporate statistics in order to illustrate the principles involved.
Though figures for building costs, shortages, incomes, and volume
of housing production fluctuate over a period of months, the
fundamental nature of the housing problem remains the same.
The principles which are discussed in this study are not therefore
invalidated because the illustrative statistics are not me most
recent available at the time of publication. .
On the subject of housing much has been written -in many
languages over a period of many years. It might be thought that
nothing new remains to be said. And yet in Canada we have
hardly begun to attack the real hard core.of our housing problem
and there is little public understanding of the task before us,
Should we not formulate our own solutions to these problems
rather than borrow the methods of other countries? To do so, we
must know the actual circumstances in Canadian cities and clarify
our attitude:towards the obvious deficiencies of our housing. What
do we want to do about it and whose responsibility is it? In order
to answer these questions to our own satisfaction, there must. be
still more Canadian books on the subject of housing.
xiv Preface
Housing problems are of a local character and cannot be
realistically expressed in national terms. A discussion of housing
becomes somewhat. academic unless consideration is given. to
actual people and actual places. For this reason the main body
of statistical material which is employed in this study has been
derived from the Greater Toronto area. But the general principles
and conclusions are applicable to other metropolitan areas. The .
material dealing specifically with the Toronto area has been sand-
wiched between introductory and concluding chapters which arè
intended to indicate these wider national implications.
At various stages in the preparation of the text advice has
been most gratefully received from a number of individuals who
have particular knowledge of certain aspects of the subject. It
would not be appropriate to name these individuals since they
may not wish to be associated with the general conclusions -
which have been drawn.
Mr. Robert 'T. Adamson, Research Assistant, made a most im-
portant contribution to the preparation of this study. He was
largely responsible for the assembling of the statistical material
contained in Chapters IH and IV and also contributed the rational
approach of the economist to the very abbreviated discussion of
the housing market in Chapter V. Mrs. A. L. Hopwood, Research
Assistant, has been responsible for many details of preparation
and proof-reading.
Finally, the author is indebted to Dr. Harry M. Cassidy,
Director of the School of Social Work, and his colleagues, for their
efforts in making this study possible and for their many helpful
suggestions and other contributions during the progress of the
work.
HUMPHREY CARVER-
School of Social Work
University of Toronto
June, 1948 ©
Houses for Canadians
Chapter One: A DECENT. HOME
g FOR EVERY FAMILY
Houses, FAMILIES, AND MONEY
On every continent and in every city families are anxiously look-
ing for better places in which to live. As we approach the middle
of the twentieth century the shortage of houses is a world-wide
phenomenon.
During the nineteen-thirties the tide of economic insecurity
and apprehension discouraged people from building houses and
then, for six years, the skills of men were everywhere enlisted for
purposes of destruction. But through wars and economic depres-
sions the human race has continued stubbornly to multiply. Now,
hungry for an interval of peace and stability, the people start
again to build the houses that they must have for the raising of a
new generation.
Canada, no less than other countries, has suffered from the
diversion of its constructive energies. We are privileged, however,
in having emerged from the war with our cities intact. In Great
Britain, between 1939 and 1945, 200,000 houses were destroyed
and another 250,000 made uninhabitable by enemy action. The
U.S.S.R. is said to have lost six million dwellings and the destruc-
tion of houses in Germany is beyond calculation. In Canada the
unprecedented pressure placed upon our housing accommodation
does not originate in the absolute loss of dwellings, but has been
brought about by the vigorous growth of the population during a
period when the house-building industry has been relatively in-
active. i
_ The shortage of houses with which Canada was to be faced
after the war was not altogether unforeseen. In 1943 the Dominion
3
4 . Houses ror CANADIANS
Government appointed the Advisory Committee on Reconstruc-
tion, and in March, 1944 a sub-committee produced a 250-page
study on the subject of housing and community planning.’ This
historic document, commonly known as the “Curtis Report,” after -
the sub-committee’s chairman, forecast the post-war situation in
remarkably accurate terms and presented extensive recommenda-
tions for housing policy. The authors of the Curtis Report cal-
culated that, if 1946 was to be the first full construction year, it
would be necessary for Canada to build at least 731,000 housing
units in the following decade; of this number 535,000 should be
in urban areas, 71,000 in “non-farm rural areas,” and 125,000
should be farm dwellings. The dimensions of this programme
have subsequently formed the basis of the federal government's
plans. But the Minister of Reconstruction and Supply stated in
the House of Commons in July, 1946: “This estimate does not take
account of all the doubling-up which we are experiencing and a
desirable vacancy rate needed to assure flexibility in our housing —
supply. If account of these additional factors is taken, we estimate
that we should build some 480,000 units during the five years
ending March, 1952. About 80,000 units should be built during
1947-48 and 100,000 in each of the following years.”
This was a gigantic task for a country which had never before
built more than 50,000 housing units in a year and during the ten
. pre-war years had constructed an average of only 26,000 dwel-
lings a year. In fact in some respects Canada had to embark upon
its post-war housing programme at a greater disadvantage than
either Great Britain or the United States; for it had allowed its
residential construction industry to languish and the production
plant and force of building tradesmen had declined far below the
normal needs. Between 1921 and 1939 the United States had built
1Advisory Committee on Reconstruction, Report (IV) Housing and Com-
munity Planning (Ottawa;.March 1944). The report is divided into three parts:
the first is a study of housing legislation in Canada, Britain, and the United States;
the second ‘part provides the measurements of Canada’s housing needs; while the
final third outlines the methods by which the programme should be carried out,
dealing with the subjects of community planning; home-ownership, subsidized
low-rental housing, farm housing, and the organization of the building. industry
itself,
A Decent Home for Every Family 5
nearly ten million houses, or the equivalent of 75,000 for each
million of its population. In the same period Canada had built:
581,000 dwellings or the equivalent of only 50,500 for each million
of its population. During these same years Great Britain had
accomplished a remarkable achievement, having constructed
more than three and a half million dwellings, or the equivalent
of 83,000 units for each million of its population, Furthermore,,
Great Britain had stepped up its production consistently from
year to year and reached the peak during the years immediately
preceding the war. The peak of Canadian production had been
in 1928, after which production dropped to a mere 14,400 units.
in 1933 and in 1939 was only limping slowly back into full activity.
There had been little encouragement for the younger generation
to enter the trades and professions associated with such an appar-
ently vulnerable business. The fact is that the skills, arts, and
sciences of domestic architecture and community planning had
been dormant in Canada for a generation. The process of building
houses and planning residential areas was beset with time-wormn
practices and obsolete conventions, which restricted the develop-
ment of a national housing programme.
To activate the production of housing the federal government
provided the National Housing Act 1944 which superseded the
previous legislation in the Dominion Housing Act of 1935 and the
National Housing Act of 1988. The two previous acts had been
almost entirely concerned with making loans for building houses
for private ownership and had been administered by the Depart-
ment of Finance. On January 1, 1946 the administration of the
new act was taken over by the Central Mortgage and Housing
Corporation, a federal agency created to provide discounting
facilities for the loan and- mortgage companies and which now
became the control centre from which the nation’s housing affairs
were to be conducted. Although the C.M.H.C. could not create
policy and was limited by the terms of the legislation under which
it was to operate, yet it appeared to have wide powers of dis-
cretion in influencing the manner in which the whole housing
programme would be carried out. For the National Housing Act
contained the following provisions:
6 Houses For CANADIANS
(1) Loans to prospective home-owners wishing to build for
themselves.
(2) Loans to assist in the construction of co-operative housing
projects.
(8) Loans to builders who intend to build either forsale or
for rental purposes.
(4) Loans to limited-dividend ‘corporations undertaking the
construction of low-rental housing projects.
(5) Guarantees to life insurance companies investing funds
in the construction of low-rental and moderate-rental housing
projects.
(6) Assistance to municipalities collaborating with limited-
dividend corporations or life insurance companies in slum-clear-
ance schemes.
(7) Housing research and community planning.
This variety of provisions suggests the intention of attacking
housing needs on a wide front. It has subsequently appeared,
however, that those who framed the National Housing Act 1944
were over-optimistic as to the effectiveness of its provisions, par-
ticularly those concerned with rental housing.
Canada embarked upon its post-war housing programme in a
period of vigorous national development. Through 1945, 1946,
and 1947 the number of Canadian families continued to increase
at the rate of about 65,000 a year. During these years the pro-
duction of new houses did little more than keep pace with this
increase, leaving the absolute shortage as great as it had been at
the end of the war. In 1945, 48,599 housing units were built in
Canada, 67,315 in 1946, and about 75,000 in 1947. But the pres-
sure on housing space became more intense as husbands and
wives were reunited after wartime separations; many were able to
have children for the first time and others. were now able to add
to their families. In 1945 there were 187,000 children born in
urban Canada; in 1946 the number rose to 161,000, and in 1947
to 180,000. As an additional threat overhanging the accomplish-
ment of any housing programme there was now the prospect of
large-scale immigration from Britain and Europe; if immigrants
A Decent Home for Every Family 7
should arrive at the rate of half-a-million a year, as has been fore-
cast recently by a federal minister, all previous calculations of
housing need would be eclipsed.
While the country was happy in the vitality of its population, -
in the increasing demand for its products, and in the envied place
which it had won for itself in the society of nations, yet these very
circumstances did not create economic conditions in which it was
particularly easy to carry out a large housing programme. While
the young people of Canada were getting married and seeking
homes in which to raise families, the prosperous industrial and
business corporations were competing for the services of the con-
struction industry. An expanding nation needs not only houses but
also more factories, stores, banks, theatres, and all the other
physical equipment with which to operate its resources and main-
tain employment. i
` While the production of houses was only moderately acceler-
ated during the post-war years, the competing demands of in-
dustry and business were forcibly exerted on the limited supply
of materials and skilled labour. This is dramatically shown in the
values of building contracts awarded during these years. The
annual value of residential contracts remained fairly constant at
about $200 million a year; in fact the total in 1947 was actually
a little less than it had been in 1946. But at the same time the
building operations of business and industry were being tre-
mendously accelerated; the value of these building contracts rose
from $162 million in 1945 to $825 million in 1946 and again to
$353 million in 1947.? On every side impressive buildings were to
be seen rising from their excavations.
Canadian families who needed housing could observe all
around them the confidence with which limited liability com-
panies could assemble money and materials for commercial enter-
prise. But, with the increasing cost of living and the increasing
cost of building, the Canadian family could not feel quite the same
confidence in embarking upon the private enterprise of buying a
home, with all the complexities and risks ‘attached to such an
2Building Reporter. Maclean Building Reports, Ltd.. (Toronto).
8 Houses ror CANADIANS
undertaking. It must be realized that though home-ownership has
been advertised as one of the virtuous aims of every Canadian
householder, yet in normal times only about one-third of all urban
households in Canada have been home-owners.* The great major-
ity of Canadian families do not expect to have to buy a house, and
could not reasonably hope that their financial prospects would
justify such a bold commitment.
Unfortunately the construction of housing for rent was one of
the forms of commercial enterprise to which not even a limited
liability company was attracted. The energy and enterprise of
Canadian businessmen, so skilful in financing and organizing large
projects, entirely failed to produce the basic requirement of most
Canadian families—a house to rent. The one conscientious attempt
to establish a national producer of rental housing on an economic
basis proved a failure when Housing Enterprises Limited, having
produced about 3,000 units, went out of business before the end
of 1947. This step-child of the insurance companies could not
produce a dwelling in which the average Canadian family could
afford to live. However, an important contribution to the housing
programme has been the continued operation of Wartime Hous-
ing Limited, the agency established by the federal government
during the war for accommodating the families of workers who
had to be moved near to munitions factories. By this agency 1,556
rental units were completed in 1945, 7,997 in 1946, and about
5,000 in 1947—all of these being reserved for the families of
veterans. This is an impressive record for a single agency, repre-
senting nearly 7 per cent of the total volume of Canadian housing
production in those years. Yet, since Wartime Housing Limited
has been virtually the only producer of rental housing, this con-
tribution obviously goes but a small way towards meeting the
needs.
Business interests have been unwilling to risk their capital in
rental housing because of the greatly increased costs of con-
struction in the post-war period. A rent of $90 a week would now
34t the time of the 1981 census 63 per cent of households in Canadian cities
were tenants and in 1941, 66 per cent of households in the twelve large metro-
politan areas were tenants.
A Decent Home for Every Family 9
be required for space which before the war could have been pro-
vided for $50. Or, conversely, it is now possible to offer little more
than half the space that could have been provided for the same
rent before the war. Consequently it was to be feared that the
owners of such high-cost housing would be the first to lose their
tenants whenever the demand for housing accommodation slack-
ened. This situation would be particularly precarious as long as
the federal government continued to control the rents of existing
housing, maintaining them at little more than their pre-war level.
(Based on an index of 100 for the 1935-1939 period, rents had
risen only to 112 in 1945 and to 120 by the end of 1947, while in
the same period the cost of living index had risen to 146,) Busi-
ness interests have contended, quite logically, that they could not
afford to invest in rental housing as long as this lower level of
existing rents threatened to siphon off their tenants as demand
slackened. From this it has’ been argued that all rent controls
should be removed in order to stimulate the production of rental
housing. It is a nice dilemma. Obviously the removal of rent
restrictions would be accompanied by demands for increased
wages and this in turn by added costs of production in the
familiar spiral of inflation. l
INDICES
PER CENT INCREASE OF
1946 OCTÒBER OCTOBER, 1947 OVER
AVERAGE 1947 1946 AVERAGE
*Price of Building Materials. 152.5 210.9 38%
*Price of All Commodities 140.9 180.8 > 28%
*Cost of Living 123.6 142.2 15%
*Rent 112.7 119.9 6.3%
fAverage Weekly Earnings 134.5 148.1 10%
The increase in costs of building has been the most dramatic
and troublesome feature of Canada’s post-war economy. Between
1939 and the end of 1945 the index of materials and labour costs
*From Housing in Canada, Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation
Quarterly, Base, 1985-1939 = 100.
+From Labour Gazette Jan.-Feb., 1948. Base, June 1, 1941 = 100.
10 as i HOUSES FOR CANADIANS
had risen from 100 to about 145. But during 1946 and 1947 the
price of building materials took a spectacular leap to an index of
more than 200, while wage rates in the construction industry rose
to 160. Taking into account the factors of both labour and
materials the cost of building at the end of 1947 was about 80 per
cent higher than it had been in 1939. The costs of new houses
have thus come to be out of all proportion to the general price
level and to the level of wages (see table on page 9).
Rent-control has protected the householder already in occu-
pation of a house. But more and more houses have been taken out
of the rental market as property owners have seized the oppor-
tunity to sell whenever a vacancy occurred. To repair this loss of
rental units there has been considerable private activity in sub-
dividing existing houses into flats, in addition to which the federal
government has had to make financial grants for the creation of
“emergency shelter” units at the cost of about four million dollars
for 8,400 units. But under the pressure of the housing shortage
more and more tenant families have found themselves being
thrust into those housing markets whose prices are governed by
the cost of building—the markets for new housing both for sale
and for rent and the “used housing” market where price levels
are ultimately governed also by the cost of building equivalent
new. units, At no time in the past has a very large proportion of
the population been able to enter these markets. The Curtis Com-
mittee reported that in 1941 two-thirds of the tenant families in
Canadian metropolitan areas had annual incomes of less than
$1,800 and would not have been able therefore to pay more than
$30 a month for housing. Though incomes have risen since 1941
they have not risen, as we have shown above, to the same extent
as building costs. It seems evident therefore that there has been
no real increase in the proportion of Canadian families that could
afford to buy a new house.
When the resources and skills of Canada were released for
peace-time activity it was recognized that there must be a step-
ping-up of housing production to accommodate the increasing
working population. Additional housing was required for all eco-
nomic classes. The National Housing Act 1944 was intended to
A Decent Home for Every Family 11
provide the means by which housing of many different types
could be created by many different kinds of agency drawing
capital from many different sources. But under economic circum-
stances that'could not perhaps have been foreseen, the housing
programme has not assumed this broad inclusive character. The
housing of 1945, 1946, and 1947 has been almost entirely the
product of the small-scale builders each offering a few small
detached homes for sale.
The optimism of the post-war years, supported by wartime
savings, has provided the speculative builders with customers to
such an extent that the numerical programme has almost been
fulfilled by this means alone. However, the 1947 production of
75,000 housing units has fallen somewhat short of the 80,000
target and with the dissipation of wartime savings, the increased
cost of living, and the gathering doubts as to the security of the
world in which we earn our national income, it now seems im-
probable that the target of 100,000 housing units can be reached
in 1948 unless ‘other agencies of production can be brought into
action. l
Impressive though the numerical record of post-war housing
production has been, we must admit that its character has fulfilled
neither the recommendations of the Curtis Report nor the frame-
work provided in the National Housing Act 1944. There has not
been a confident development of new community areas, planned
on a generous scale to contain the varieties of accommodation
required by the Canadian people. In three years we have scat-
tered nearly 200,000 small homes on the fringes of our cities and
towns. The numbers are impressive, but anyone who looks at the
new housing areas with a critical judgment must confess that the
product of the programme is monotonous, disorganized, and not
consistent with the intentions expressed in the documents on
which the programme has been based. =
Tue NatronaL House Poticy
As we enter anew period of history, with the housing shortage
recognized as our outstanding social problem and the crucial test
of our economic and technological skill, it is possible already to
12. Houses ror CANADIANS
discern a most significant change in the public attitude to these
problems. Without such a reorientation it might indeed be impos-
sible either to modernize the process of building houses or to
bring about a revival in the arts of domestic architecture and
civic planning. This change of public attitude arises from the very
nature of the situation in which so many Canadian families have
found themselves. The need for better housing accommodation
has now been an experience shared by.so many in all kinds of
circumstances that we have come to think of housing as a matter
of public concern requiring some kind of corporate action. Every
community has had to make an inventory of its accommodation
and has had occasion to appraise its stock of housing with a
critical eye. The country’s stock of housing has suddenly become
a matter of profound personal interest to a very great number of
people, for in 1946 the number of dwellings in Canadian cities
was about 200,000 less than the number of families and a large
proportion of those dwellings was very obviously in need of re-
placement. Post-war society has examined the housing which it
has inherited from a previous generation and has found it to be
inadequate both in quantity and quality. The public is therefore
keenly interested to know how the necessary additions to the
stock are to be,made and by what means the process of replace-
ment is to be effected.
This all-inclusive view of the nation’s housing affairs provides
a new background against which to work out plans for the future.
Formerly the building of houses appeared to be a matter which
directly concerned only those who could afford to buy a new
house. But it has now become apparent that the building of new
houses concerns very many more people than those who can
actually afford to occupy one. For the great bulk of our existing
stock of housing we are indeed indebted to the enterprise and
initiative of the original purchasers, but we now perceive that
they were but agents in the process of creating the community's
stock of housing and that the ownership of.a house is but a pass-
ing phase in its service ‘to the community. The fact is that more
A Decent Home for Every Family | 18
than half of our urban households do not live in houses that they
own and five years is about the average length of time each house-
hold stays in a dwelling. Our older houses have now had several
generations of use and 60 per cent of all urban housing in Canada
is now more than a quarter of a century old and was built accord-
ing to standards accepted before the first Great War. Each dwel-
ling.in a community's stock of housing passes through many
ownerships and serves many families during its useful lifetime.
As we begin to perceive this process it becomes clear that the
community as a whole, on behalf of all its members, has a direct
interest in the building up of an adequate quantity of housing and
in the achievement of a high quality of design. a
This realization of the whole comprehensive range of housing .
affairs is reflected in the policies of our national and local govern-
ments. There is introduced for the first time upon the Canadian
scene the concept of a housing “programme,” arising out of the
need to measure our shortages and deficiencies and the conse-
quent formulation of plans for their rectification. This in turn
implies the setting of certain standards of achievements for such
a programme. Have we not now come to assume that the pro-
vision of a separate dwelling for every family is a national objec-
tive? Perhaps there has been no official declaration of such a
‘governmental policy and yet the whole philosophy of the Curtis
Report and the subsequent efforts of the Dominion Government
to plan a production programme inevitably imply such an inten-
tion. And if “a separate dwelling for every family” is accepted as
an objective of national policy, does it not then become necessary
to define some standards by which to measure the quality of such
dwellings? For there would be little effectiveness in a policy
which sanctioned the use of an unhealthy slum or shack even if
it could be technically described a “separate dwelling.” So by
an inescapable logic the concept of a housing “programme” leads
to an acceptance of the view that such a programme can only be
said to have reached fulfilment when every family has been
placed in a separate dwelling of decent quality. It then becomes
-T4 HouseEs FOR CANADIANS
evident that the critical portion of a nation’s housing is in the
areas of slums and sub-standard dwellings. It is the ultimate aim
of a total housing programme to raise the worst-housed families
to that level of decent living which we hope to accomplish for
everyone in the Dominion of Canada. l
The definition of a nation’s ultimate housing objective is an
essential preliminary to the provision of the necessary legislation
and the establishment of administrative organizations for reach-
ing that objective. The General Housing Bill recently presented
to the United States Congress (and commonly known as the
Wagner-Ellender-Taft Bill) is described as “A Bill to establish a
national housing policy and provide for its execution”; the first
few lines of the preamble are as follows:
“The Congress hereby declares that the general welfare and
security of the Nation and the health and living standards of its
people require a production of residential construction and re-
lated community development sufficient to remedy the serious
cumulative housing shortage, to eliminate slums and blighted
areas, to realise as soon as possible the goal of a decent home and
a suitable living environment for every American family and to
develop and redevelop communities so as to advance the growth
and wealth of the Nation.”
A somewhat similar expression of aims was made in the British
Government’s White Paper of March, 1945 setting out the nation’s
housing programme of the post-war years. Three objectives are
stated: .
The Government's first objective is to afford a separate dwelling for
every family which desires to have one. For this purpose it is estimated that
some three quarters of a million dwellings are needed.
The“Second objective is to provide for the rapid completion of the slum
clearance: and overcrowding programmes which were already in course of
execution. before the war. To remove houses already condemned as unfit and
to abate overcrowding condemned since 1935, a further half million houses
are needed, ;
The long-term objective of the Government is to secure a progressive
improvement in the conditions of housing in respect both of standards of
accommodation and of equipment, and to attain this objective by a con-
tinuous programme of new building. This continuous programme must
A Decent Home for Every Family 15
include provision year by year for any increase in the number of separate
families, the needs ‘which arise out of redistribution of the population, and
the replacement of obsolescent houses.
These categorical statements of housing policy must be com-
pared with the somewhat limited objectives implied in the
description of Canada’s operating legislation, the National Hous-
ing Act 1944 which is described as “An Act to Promote the Con-
struction of New Houses, the Repair and Modernization of
Existing Houses, the Improvement of Housing and Living Con-
ditions, and the Expansion of Employment in the Postwar Period.”
For some expression of our ultimate objectives we must look
to the statements of responsible national leaders. At the Dominion-
Provincial Conference on Reconstruction in August, 1945 the Rt.
Hon. Louis St. Laurent said: “The objective is to put a well in-
tegrated and permanent housing programme into full operation
with the least possible delay.” With reference to the rental sector
of such a programme as projected in the National Housing Act
1944 he said: “the effect of Dominion participation in financing
is to produce a substantial reduction in economic rentals . .
nevertheless there will be some for whom the reduced economic
rentals are too high. To provide for such cases a limited dividend
housing corporation may accept contributions to a rent reduction
fund from a provincial government, municipality, social agency,
trust or person.”*
A somewhat similar statement was made in the House of Com-
mons a year later by the Rt. Hon. C. D. Howe:
Adequate housing for the Canadian people is one of the major tasks
before us. The utmost effort will be directed towards meeting this need and
the resources of the country will be used to this end. ... It is the policy to
ensure that as large a portion as possible of housing be built by private
initiative. If, however, with all the assistance we can provide for financing,
materials and labour supply, the houses required to substantially improve
the housing standard of the Canadian people are not forthcoming, then the
Dominion Government will take a direct position in the housing field... .
We believe that houses should be constructed commensurate with the high
standard of living at which we are aiming. This will involve new houses for
4Dominion-Provincial Conference on Reconstruction, August 6, 1945. Report
of the Plenary Session No. 1, p. 68.
16 l TIOUSES FOR CANADIANS
v
families with low. income who cannot afford to pay economic rentals. .
But subsidies to create uneconomic rentals are, in my opinion, a matter for
provincial and municipal concern.® :
The limits of the national government’s responsibility have
also been defined by Mr. Howe in the following terms:
The Dominion Government recognizes the need of adequate housing
as Canada’s most pressing social problem and one of the most serious of
all public problems. Since housing is a function of property and civil rights,
a matter within the jurisdiction of provincial and municipal governments,
direct participation by the Dominion in a housing programme is circum-
scribed. During the war and transition periods, however, the Dominion has
entered the housing field directly to build accommodation under its war-
time. emergency powers. In its proposals to the Dominion-Provincial Con-
ference (August, 1945) the Dominion Government invited the provinces to
consider the various aspects of low-rent housing and slum-clearance. In the
absence of agreement on Dominion-Provincial relations made at that time,
the provisions made in the National Housing Act 1944 respecting low-rent
housing, subsidisation of such housing and slum clearance have been
allowed to stand unchanged. ... The hard-core of the problem—low-rent
housing—has been barely touched. Until a steady flow of low-rent units is
started no Canadian can feel satisfied with what is being accomplished. . . .
Meanwhile the Dominion is discharging in full its responsibility for that
part of the problem that is the direct result of the war, and is anxious to
work out with the Provinces and municipalities a basis for handling the
long term problem.*®
These declarations of policy are important because they reveal
the awareness of an ultimate objective. It is conceded by federal
ministers that, ultimately, housing legislation must not only offer -
facilities for the production of houses in the normal economic
market but must also create action for making good the de-
ficiencies of production. The federal government has been dis-
creet, however, in not committing itself to a responsibility for
those special legislative and financial provisions without which
the ultimate housing objectives cannot perhaps be reached. When
governments at three levels are soliciting the goodwill of the
electorate they must inevitably each seek to avoid financial com-
mitments; in the practical operation of a federal system it is per-
5House of Commons Debates, Official Report, 1946, p. 3753.
®The Rt. Hon. C.. D. Howe, “Meeting Canada’s. Housing Needs” (Public
Affairs, October, 1947).
A Decent Home for Every Family I7
haps right that they should do so. For in the last resort the appor-
tionment of the financial load must receive the endorsation of the
taxpayers and their judgment in the matter must arise out of an
understanding of the real nature of the housing problem.
But are we concerned here simply with a matter of constitu-
tional law? Is it sufficient to say that, jurisdictionally, housing is
a matter of property and civil rights and therefore the ultimate
responsibilities belong to the provinces? Are we not concerned
here with the very basis of our national life, the provision of
adequate housing in which to raise the crop of healthy young
Canadians on whose mental and physical health the vigour of the
nation depends?
At the beginning of this study of housing it is necessary to
raise this question of ultimate objectives because, unless these are
defined, the problem cannot be clearly presented nor solutions
intelligently discussed. To keep supplying enough houses to
satisfy the effective demand of those who can afford to occupy
new accommodation, either as owners or tenants, is obviously a
task of far less magnitude than to supply enough houses to fulfil
the needs of every family in the community. The former task may
be accomplished through the normal economic functioning of
supply and demand. The latter task presents a problem of supply
and need, the solution to which must require procedures of an
entirely different kind, involving the implementation of policies
based on concepts of national health, social justice, and com-
munity welfare.
Housinc AND HEALTH-
The reasons for believing that every family and household in
the Dominion of Canada should have the opportunity of living
in a separate dwelling of reasonable size and character may seem
too self-evident to require substantiation. The sciences and arts
of civilization have, throughout historical time, been focussed
upon the building of towns and cities and homes in which men
have thought that they would be able to live a more free and
healthy life; insulated against the weather and against disease and
18 Housrs ror CANADIANS
sickness and against the intrusions of other people. The surface
~ of the earth is littered with the ruins of man’s successive attempts
to build for himself more secure, more comfortable, more labour-
saving, and more sanitary places to live in. This seeking after a
healthy way of living has always been one of the ulterior objec-
tives and stimulating forces in society. But however reasonable
and self-evident this objective may be, some rational explanation
seems necessary in order that a national housing policy may be
clearly formulated and vigorously executed, not on account of
sentiment or some dimly perceived mission but for reasons that
can be scientifically demonstrated. What measurable benefit
would accrue to the community as a whole as the result of supply-
ing such a volume of good housing that the worst housing could
be taken out of circulation?
The simple answer to this question is that a direct relationship
exists between health and the physical conditions under which
people live. The fundamental reason for regarding housing as a
social service requiring governmental direction, is the acceptance
by our society of a corporate responsibility for the health of all
its members. In one way or another we have come to regard this
responsibility as a measure of material self-protection; in order
that we should reproduce ourselves and work together effectively
as an economic unit we must see that all members of our society
are properly fed and decently housed and provided with the
modest pleasures and artistic fancies that make life worth living.
_It may seem superfluous to elaborate on this theme when so
many families in this community are suffering acutely from the
humiliations, insecurities, conflicts and all kinds of sickness both
mental and physical which accompany a shortage of decent hous-
ing accommodation. Though it is not the purpose of this study to
catalogue the varieties and amount of ill health which are being
originated and intensified by the present housing situation, yet
the daily and hourly existence of these human tragedies up and
down the streets of Canadian cities must be regarded as the back-
ground of all that follows.
To each individual in the families affected the problem is a
A Decent Home for Every Family 19
personal one. To the mother it is the bitterness of having to bring
up children without a home of their own—in a crowded room in
someone else’s house, without proper equipment, without any
apparent prospects of getting established and continually pursued
by fears of being evicted. Under such conditions the common
minor problems of sickness and family discipline begin to assume
fearsome proportions. For the father there is the nagging sense
of responsibility for finding an escape from a situation beyond
his control and the threat that the failure to establish a home will
necessitate a separation of the family. For the children, sensitive
to the insecurity and irritations of their parents, there is an urge
to escape from home rather than meet disappointments there;
particularly for the ‘teen-age children is there a humiliation in the
circumstances and an inability to find the privacy so urgently
needed for the development of their individualities. It is from
such a background that there emerge the manifold health and
_ welfare problems with which the community’s social agencies
have to deal; these agencies find that the present housing situation
is the principal factor in the problems with which they are
presented.
It is obvious that a family is likely to be most healthy and
happy when it is living in a house that is easy to keep clean, that
can be maintained at a desirable temperature, that provides some
privacy for each individual and a generally stimulating atmos-
phere of light and colour. Yet, curiously enough, very little scien-
tific investigation has been directed at these environmental fac-
tors in a health programme. There is, however, a gradually
accumulating body of evidence of a negative kind, showing that
there is a measurable relationship between poor health and poor
housing. In the city of Toronto this was first clearly established
as long ago as 1934 by the Lieutenant Governors Committee on
Housing Conditions in Toronto and published in what is generally
known as the “Bruce Report.”? In reviewing the housing problems
of this post-war period no apology is needed for recalling this
TReport of the Lieutenant Governors Committee on Housing Conditions in
Toronto (Toronto, 1934).
20 Houses ror CANADIANS
important evidence from the nineteen-thirties, which is briefly
summarized in Table I. The Bruce Report is an important and
classic document which laid the foundation of what may be
` described as our housing philosophy. It clearly demonstrated the
inevitable association of ill health with poor housing. Though
much has happened during the intervening decade, though there
have been great changes in social and economic conditions, yet
the same poor housing is still with us. But now it is overcrowded
and even more intensively used. ,
Similar records have been obtained from many other metro-
politan cities in Canada, the United States, and Great Britain,
showing that the close relationship between health and housing
conditions is a universal phenomenon. It has been demonstrated
furthermore that these characteristics of a poorly housed popula-
tion represent a financial load upon the taxpayers of the whole
community since the poor housing areas which require the most
expensive health and welfare services contribute the least to the
revenue of the municipality. A survey was recently made of the
city of Toronto’s annual expenses in servicing two districts of
approximately equal size, the Regent Park district of inadequate -
housing,,and a typical neighbourhood in the north end of the
city; the survey revealed the fact that the Regent Park district
cost the city $95,000 for public services and only returned a
revenue of about $32,000 (a deficit of $63,000), while the area
in north Toronto cost the city less than $20,000 for public services
and returned a revenue of about $83,000 (representing a net gain
of $63,000).
Now it must be confessed that there is a certain weakness in
most statistical presentations offered as evidence that poor hous-
ing conditions are really the cause of poor health and other forms
of social disability which are a burden to the community at large.
It is certainly not difficult to demonstrate that poor health and
other expensive pathological characteristics are commonly found
in association with poor housing but it is not so easy to prove that
they are related as cause and effect. Is it not possible, it is some-
times asked, that the high incidence of mortality, disease, and
A Decent Home for Every Family 21
delinquency found in slum areas should really be attributed to
the general conditions of poverty and incomplete education that
characterize those areas? People who cannot afford to pay very
much for their housing naturally gravitate into slums and other
areas where the lowest rents are charged. Perhaps the same
characteristics which make people ineffective in earning a living
also render them ineffective in dealing with problems of physical
and mental health in their families. It may be argued that this
relative ineffectiveness in a certain section of the community
would cause about the same morbidity rates whether that par-
ticular population were housed in good or in bad conditions. In
fact the only way to give scientific proof of the causative relation-
ship between housing and health is to examine the effects of mov-
. ing a specific group of people out of poor housing conditions into
good housing conditions. Unfortunately there has not been’ an
opportunity to conduct such a controlled experiment in Canada
and we are therefore compelled to rely upon the evidence of
experiments that have been conducted in Great Britain and the
United States. Each of these countries has been able to provide
well-authenticated studies made in the process of re-housing the
populations of slum areas. Each of the four groups whose health
records are shown on Table II evidently underwent an improve-
ment as the direct result of the change of environment. It is
noticeable, however, in the two English groups studied, that in
no case did their health records improve to such an extent that
they were raised to the average standard of the whole city. Per-
haps the period of observation was not sufficiently long to allow
the full benefits of re-housing to take effect. But it may also be
allowed that these particular population groups were not as in-
herently healthy as those in other parts of the city which had
enjoyed over the previous years better living conditions of all
kinds—nutritional, environmental, educational, and occupational.
It is generally conceded that the full benefits of improved housing
are not immediately found in the adult population who cannot
react immediately to new conditions; the full benefits of good
housing are brought to bear on the child population and the real
22 Houses For CANADIANS
extent of these benefits could only be properly measured over a
lifetime. In this connection it is interesting to observe that studies
have recently been made in the United States showing a relation-
ship between poor housing and personality and mental disorders;
it was found that army rejection rates for personality defects were
one and one half times as great for young men recruited from cer-
tain slum areas as compared with men from good housing areas.°
The provision of adequate housing is not an end in itself but
is to be regarded, rather, as the means of promoting a healthy
way of life. The American Public Health Association, through its
Committee on the Hygiene of Housing, has enunciated thirty
basic requirements of good housing;® these are grouped under
four main headings and may be briefly summarized as follows:
(1) Fundamental Physiological Needs
(Temperature, light, quietness, space);
(2) Fundamental Psychological Needs
(Privacy, social expression, hygiene, ease
of operation);
(3) Needs for Protection against Contagion
(Sanitation, preservation of food, separate
sleeping accommodation );
(4) Needs for Protection against Accidents
(Sound construction, fireproofing, safety
from mechanical and traffic hazards).
Even this brief summary of the relationship between health and
housing is sufficient to show that in the promotion of health
housing must be regarded as more than mere shelter. The word
“shelter,” so often used as a synonym for “housing” in the tech-
nical literature of the subject, implies nothing more than a pre-
ventive attitude and the setting of standards by sanitary engi-
neers. But good housing should provide an environment in which
there may take place a positive reaching after better health, both
8E. E. Hadley et al. “Military Psychiatry, An Ecological Note” (Psychiatry, T;
November, 1944.) p. 879.
Basic Principles of Healthful Housing, (2nd Ed.) (New York, American
Public Health Association, 1941.) .
A Decent Home for Every Family 23
of body and mind; it should provide not only protection but
exhilaration.
A seventeenth-century philosopher, Sir Henry Wotton, des-
cribed the qualities of fine architecture as “Commoditie, Firm-
nesse and Delight.” In other words good domestic architecture
(or housing, as we prefer to call it in the arid vocabulary of the
twentieth century) should provide the necessary accommodation
in a firm or sound structure and, beyond this, should refresh the
human appetité for beauty of form and colour. In the achieve-
ment of good health the sense of delight is good medicine and
cannot be omitted from the context of our housing programmes.
Any attempt to express categorically the characteristics of
good housing must give recognition to the wider environment of
a residential area. The life of a family does not take place entirely
within the four walls of its dwelling; the amenities of the neigh-
bourhood and the social contacts with other families are very
much a part of the daily round. In discussing the desirable fea-
tures of good housing we are concerned not only with the internal
arrangements of each dwelling but also with the physical plan-
ning of the larger community area. The following analytical
description of the characteristics of good housing has therefore
been divided into two parts, the dwelling plan and the community
plan.
THe CHARACTERISTICS OF Goop Hovsinc
_ Dweiinc PLAN
1. Protection. A dwelling must provide shelter from climatic
variations and privacy from the intrusions of people. It must be
a firm structure of non-inflammable material.
2. Content. The spaces within a dwelling must be of sufficient
size and must provide separated areas for family living, individual
sleeping quarters, and housework in such a way that the normal
activities of children, adolescents, and adults do not conflict.
8. Air and Light. The air circulating within a dwelling must
be pure and must be maintained at a temperature which permits
adequate heat loss from the human body. The living areas of a
94 Howusks ror CANADIANS |
dwelling should receive direct sunlight. Without undue glare,
there should be sufficient general illumination both of daylight
and artificial light. `
4. Services. Water must enter each dwelling without pollu-
tion and sewage must be removed without contaminating exposed
surfaces. The apparatus for personal hygiene, food storage, meal
preparation, and household cleaning must not require undue ex-
penditure of time and effort in operation.
5. Character. The place and form of a dwelling must give
recognition to the separate identity of each family as a component
unit in the community. In the interior of a dwelling there should
be provision for the expression of individual tastes in form and
colour.
COMMUNITY PLAN
1. Protection. A residential neighbourhood should be shel-
tered from industrial areas and protected against the intrusion of
land uses which conflict with its residential character. Arterial
traffic should be excluded from residential streets.
2. Content. The dwellings within a neighbourhood should
not be uniformly of one type but should provide a sufficient
variety of accommodation to meet the needs of various family
sizes and age groups.
3. Air and Light. There must be open spaces easily accessible
from all dwellings to provide fresh-air recréation in all seasons.
The orientation of dwellings and the space around them must
enable sunlight to enter living rooms and provide a eesonally
open outlook.
4, Services. In addition to the services of streets and ie
utilities of water, sewerage, light, and power each residential
neighbourhood requires a primary school, a community centre,
and a group of local stores.
5. Character. The layout and focal centre of a residential
area should enable the members of that community to identify
themselves as a social group enjoying collective responsibility for
the amenities of their neighbourhood.
Chapter Two: A PROGRAMME
FOR METROPOLITAN TORONTO?
THE NuMBER OF Houses NEEDED
Tue first chapter of this study has dealt with the situation in
Canada as a whole and with the wide objectives of a national
housing programme. The three chapters which now follow are
concerned with the particular situation in the Toronto area which
is used here as a territory in which to study housing needs in
greater detail. The problems which arise in this particular urban
area are broadly similar to those which may be found in other
large Canadian cities.
“Metropolitan Toronto consists of the city itself and the twelve
surrounding suburban municipalities. Though the residential
areas of the city and its suburbs are continuous and merge into
one another, yet there are certain distinctive features of the city’s
housing accommodation: for, while the suburbs are largely built
up with single family dwellings, 60 per cent of the housing within
the city itself is in the form of buildings containing more than one
dwelling unit. Some of these are apartment houses designed for
that purpose, but a great number are the large three- and four-
floor houses built early in the century when the average household
was twice as large as it is today and required ten or eleven rooms
for its accommodation. (At the turn of the century the average
Canadian household contained more than five persons; the
average size of the Toronto family is now 3.8.) The inheritance
of these solid brick houses from a previous generation, many of
‘1A more detailed discussion of Toronto’s post-war housing shortage and the
statistical evidence for the figures used in sections 1 and 2 of this chapter are
given in the author’s previous report: Humphrey Carver, How Much Housing
Does Greater Toronto Need?. (Toronto Metropolitan Housing Research Project,
May, 1946).
25
26 ` Houses FOR CANADIANS
them handsome examples of Victorian and Edwardian archi-
tecture, has proved invaluable during the recent pressure of the
housing shortage. By converting them for the use of two or three
or more families the city has been able to absorb an increased
population for which no new housing was built. This process has
been taking place particularly over the last fifteen years until,
room by room, housing accommodation has become saturated.
Between 1930 and 1945 there were 27,815 dwelling units
built in the suburban municipalities to house the increase of
103,320 in the population which took place during those years; in
other words, a new dwelling was provided for each additional
8.75 persons. But during the same period the population of the
city itself increased by 60,278 while only 8,052 new dwelling units
were built, or one for each 7.48 persons. From these facts there
emerges the picture of an increasingly overcrowded city able to
spill its surplus population into the suburban areas only as fast
as new housing was constructed there. Overcrowding, up till the
end of the war, was confined largely to the city itself and popula-
tion had moved into the suburban fringe in direct proportion with
the amount of accommodation provided there. A study of this
situation indicates that at the end of the war there was already
an absolute shortage of about 8,000 units in the city.
It was in these already somewhat critical circumstances that
there was now unloaded upon the city’s overtaxed housing accom-
modation the entire force of demobilized service men. Between
August, 1945 and February, 1946, 24,000 men returned to the city
itself and about 12,000 returned to their homes in the suburbs. °
About half of them were single men who went to live in their
parents’ homes, about one-fifth of them: already had homes and
families of their own, a few had no place to go. And about a third
of these veterans had wives waiting for them, but because they
had been married during the war years, they had never been able
to set up homes of their own. To the previous shortage of 8,000
units, there was consequently added a further immediate need
for about 10,000 units, making an absolute shortage in the Toronto
metropolitan area of about 18,000 housing units.
A Programme for Metropolitan Toronto 27
Though the lack of adequate housing accommodation might
be expected to exercise some restraining influence upon the
formation of new families, yet the biological urges of nature are
hard to restrain and young people are naturally optimistic. In an
expansive and confident mood, stimulated by a successful mili-
tary and industrial participation in the war, it seems inevitable
that Canadian cities are going to increase vigorously in population
in spite of the inconveniences of inadequate accommodation.
During the last census decade (1931-1941) the city’s population
increased by 4.5 per cent, while the population of the suburban
areas increased by 30 per cent. If this rate of growth were to be
repeated in the post-war decade a population of 30,000 would be
added to the city and nearly 80,000 to the suburban municipalities
making a total increase of 110,000. Unless there should be some
serious economic collapse or other kind of disaster it seems hardly
likely that metropolitan Toronto will fail to grow more rapidly
under the present stimulating conditions than it did during the
relatively discouraging pre-war years. An increase of 110,000,
assuming an average of 3.8 persons per household, would repre-
sent the need for 29,000 additional housing units to be constructed
during the next ten years. It should be observed, furthermore,
that the need for houses is related to the numbers of adults in
the population rather than to the total population figures; since
present trends in the age composition of the population show a
proportionately larger number of adults, it is likely that estimates
of the need for housing units will prove to be understated rather
than exaggerated. There will probably be a need for a larger
number of smaller dwelling units.
If, during the ten post-war years, there were constructed in
the Toronto metropolitan area 18,000 dwellings (to make up the
housing shortage) and 29,000 dwellings (to provide for the in-
crease of population) then, if our estimates and calculations are
correct, there should be approximately one dwelling unit avail-
able for each family and household, or about 257,000 units in the
whole area. This would not, however, add quite sufficient accom-
modation. For in any community the number of dwelling units
28 Houses FOR CANADIANS
must exceed the number of households by a reasonable margin
in order to provide for flexibility of movement as family groups
are redeployed under changing circumstances. There must be an
adequate number of vacancies in the stock of housing or else the
normal process of movement could not take place. It is commonly
regarded as desirable that the vacancy rate for single-family dwel-
lings should be 2 per cent and for apartments 6 per cent. Even
if the minimum proportion of vacancies were regarded as ade-
quate it would be necessary to provide 5,000 housing units (2 per
cent of 257,000) in addition to the need already estimated, raising
the whole ten-year programme to 52,000.
The Toronto metropolitan community is thus faced with the
task of constructing houses at the rate of more than 5,000 units a
year for at least a ten-year period. This represents a volume of
production twice as great as the average 2,400 units a year built
during the period 1931-1945, During 1945 3,458 units were com-
pleted in the area, in 1946 4,447, and in 1947 4,021. Since this rate
is little more than sufficient to keep pace with the growth of the
population it is evident that during 1948 and subsequent years
the volume of production will have to be greatly intensified.
Tue NuMBER OF REPLACEMENTS NEEDED
A community’s stock of housing is in a continuous process of
deterioration and obsolescence. Houses, like clothes and furniture
and cars, not only wear out through continued use and exposure
to the weather but also cease to fit the needs of the people as
ways of living change. As older houses come into the possession
of families whose economic circumstances make it more difficult
for them to contribute towards the increasing costs of mainten-
ance, the process of physical deterioration is accelerated. At the
‘same time older houses come to be occupied by families whose
ways of living are further removed both in time and social status
from those for whom they were originally designed.
The city of Toronto is now entering an age of maturity when
its internal parts, constructed half a century ago, no longer meet
contemporary requirements. Since the incorporation of the city
A Programme for Metropolitan Toronto 7 29
in 1836, the community has been busy growing and adding to its
total stock of housing accommodation. With the need to start
replacing obsolete housing we enter upon an entirely new phase
of civic business, requiring procedures for which there are yet
no precedents in Canada. The industrial cities of Great Britain
reached this stage of maturity some time ago and are therefore `
further advanced in their experience of replacing obsolete hous-
ing. The United States had already started on this process before
the war through the instrumentality of the United States Housing
Act 1987 and the Federal Public Housing Agency; American
cities are now faced with the necessity for extensive measures of
urban redevelopment for which new legal and administrative
powers are now being formulated.
In the ten-year period since 1936, 1,712 dwellings have been
demolished in the city of Toronto, or about 1.15 per cent of all
the dwellings in the city. At this rate it would take more than a
thousand years to retire the existing stock of housing accom-
modation in metropolitan Toronto.
Two factors have enabled the city so long to postpone the
process of replacement. During the age of steam power the
characteristic form of urban growth was internal expansion
thrusting out from the core of the city. Almost as fast as the in-
terior residential areas of the city became obsolete they were over-
taken by the internal expansion of commerce and industry. The
problem of residential replacement largely solved itself as old
dwellings were demolished to make way for new commercial
buildings or former residences were adapted for business and
institutional purposes. This process still continues to some degree
along the main mid-town arteries such as Bloor, Bay and College
Streets. But, in general, this convenient method of replacement
has ceased to be effective because industries are no longer tied
to the city’s central unloading point for coal and freight. The
adult metropolis has germinated new industrial nuclei such as
Leaside, Weston, and New Toronto; the flexibility of road trans-
port and electric power have made suburban locations preferable
to central sites. The very size of the city has made it more con-
80 ; Housgs FOR CANADIANS
venient for employees to. work in these decentralized industrial
areas than to travel to the down-town centre or live in the older
and more congested neighbourhoods. And so the interior areas,
without the spontaneous process of industrial expansion and re-
placement, have become stagnant; their sombre buildings have
become an increasingly embarrassing inheritance with property-
owners fighting a strenuous rear-guard action to squeeze out of
them the last remaining values. The original home-owners of the
last century have long since given place to owners of converted
rental housing; in many cases the titular owners have little to do
with their properties personally and have placed those declining
assets under the impersonal management of real estate firms and
trust institutions.
It has been possible also to postpone the systematic process
` of replacement because the large family homes of a previous
generation could be quite conveniently converted into lodging
houses, apartments, and duplexes of which a certain stock was
required. These houses had been substantially built for the more
prolific families of the nineteenth century and their big high-
ceilinged rooms certainly had a spaciousness which the modest
six-room house of the last three decades has not been able to offer.
We may sometimes regret that the bricklayers and stonemasons
of that period practised their crafts so conscientiously, for the
ponderous Victorian architecture of early Toronto has been too
long with us. These awkward mansions have, however, been able
to absorb an increase of population during the present crisis so
we may perhaps be grateful that their removal was so long post-
poned.
The 1941 census provided an opportunity for appraising the
housing accommodation of the Canadian people. The condition
of Toronto housing did not appear in an altogether favourable
light, as can be seen in this summary:
(a) Dwellings requiring external repaizs........... 18,608
(b) Dwellings that either had no flush toilet or
only the shared use of one............... tee 24,047
A Programme for Metropolitan Toronto 31
(c) Dwellings that either had no bathtub or
shower or only the shared use of one.... 26,624
Dwellings with condition (a) and/or (b)
approximately aeiee fishes 37,000
Dwellings with condition (a) and/or (b) or
(c) approximately -eiiie 42,000
Since Toronto is a thriving city containing a large proportion
of comparatively modern houses occupied by people- with secure
incomes it is to be expected that its housing would, as a whole,
compare favourably with that of other cities. Measured by the
uniform yardstick used in the 1941 census it is evident that many
communities have a higher percentage of sub-standard dwellings,
notably Quebec City, Edmonton, Regina and Saint John, New
Brunswick. But the 42,000 sub-standard dwellings recorded in
the Toronto area—nearly 30 per cent of the total stock of hous-
ing—reveals the extent of obsolescence and the great dimensions
of the replacement task which must ultimately be undertaken.
(See Table IV.)
During 1944 the Toronto City Planning Board made a special
study of the city’s residential areas and classified their condition
under four headings: 16 per cent of the residential areas were
described as “sound”; 32 per cent of the residential areas were
described as “vulnerable”; 50 per cent of the residential areas
were described as “declining”; and 2 per cent of the residential
areas were described as “blighted.” The Planning Board recom-
mended that the “blighted” areas should be entirely rebuilt and
pointed specifically to four areas which were designated “Re-
development Areas.”
AREA POPULATION
(1) Regent Park (North) 42.2 acres 8,717
(2) Regent Park (South) 64.7 . 8,647
(3) Yorkville 41.2 1,601
(4) Trinity Park. 52.6 7,569
Total 200.7 16,534
Assuming that the average number of persons in each household
within these areas is 4.3 (the average for the city as a whole),
82 , HousEsS ror CANADIANS
the number of dwelling units required to rehouse this population `
would be 3,845. The Planning Board recommended that by more
economical use of the land the population of these areas could
be raised to 20,921 requiring 4,872 units. The first step in this
operation has been the approval given by the electorate on
January 1, 1947 to the rebuilding of the Regent Park (North)
area and the subsequent appointment of the Toronto Housing
Authority in May, 1947.
The provision of about 4,000 modern housing units in the
“Redevelopment Areas” is, however, only a small part of the
process of reconstruction which will have to be planned in order
to restrain the continuous process of obsolescence with which the
interior parts of the city are threatened and which has already
caused 50 per cent of its residential area to be classified as
“declining.” From these declining areas there is a continual flight
to the suburbs which ultimately threatens the financial structure
of the whole municipality. It is unthinkable that the solid core
of the city can be abandoned to such a wasteful decline. Some
have been hopeful that the process of time itself would rectify
this tendency towards internal deterioration, but the current his-
tory of the big cities on the American continent seems to demon-
strate that time aggravates rather than heals this process.
If we were to assume that henceforth Greater Toronto will
have to undertake a continuous replacement of dwelling units as
they reach the age of about 50 years, then the annual turnover of
this operation would have to begin at the rate of about 1,000 units
a year increasing to the rate of about 4,000 units a year at the
— end of a fifty-year period (2 per cent per annum of the present
200,000 dwelling units in the metropolitan area). The devising
of legislative and financial machinery for accomplishing this task
is undoubtedly going to be one of the major problems of urban
government during the coming years. The principal difficulty lies
in the fact that it is not sufficient merely to replace individual
buildings, even if private investors were willing to sink their
money in obsolescent districts. It is the whole character of these
neighbourhoods which must be refashioned, for the growth of the
A Programme for Metropolitan Toronto 33
city outwards from its central core has changed the whole func-
tion of the internal street system and the availability of open
spaces. As the. City Planning Board ‘stated in its 1944 report:
These areas require more than mere protective measures for their im-
provement and the operation of a Zoning By-law cannot alone do more than
stabilize existing conditions which are not satisfactory. Living conditions
and amenities, open space, freedom from heavy traific in the streets, ete.
have already become serious deficiencies which must be corrected. In order
to bring these neighbourhoods up to a desirable standard for urban resi-
dential use, both public and private action will be necessary. Public action
should of course precede private action, as only by public action can those
conditions be treated which will encourage the private individual property
owner to act on his own, behalf.
The public action required may be of two kinds or two de-
grees which might be referred to respectively as Remedial Plan-
ning and Re-planning.
(1) Remedial Planning. Some declining neighbourhoods are
not beyond recall and their vitality may be restored without much
disturbance of the existing street plans and properties. By minor
adaptations of the street system it may be possible to divert
through traffic into main arteries and at the same time remove
traffic hazards and create additional play areas. By integrating the
improvement plans of the school authorities, the Parks’ Depart-
ment, the operation of the zoning by-laws, and the activities of a
neighbourhood citizens’ association it may be possible to recreate
a community and initiate a new spontaneous growth. A pro-
gramme directed to this end has been proposed by the City Plan-
ning Board in a recent message to the people.* The success of
such remedial planning would undoubtedly depend upon the
vigour with which it was conducted and the recognition and sup-
port it was given by citizen groups. Unless the people concerned
really believed that a neighbourhood could be revitalized it would
not be revitalized.
(2) Re-planning. Some declining neighbourhoods cannot be
brought back to a desirable standard of residential use without
a complete re-planning of the properties and some disturbance of
2The Planning Board Reports to the Citizens, a four-page leaflet issued in
May, 1947.
34 Houses ror CANADIANS
the street system. These are characteristically in the districts of
mixéd land use to be found along the borders of main arteries.
In Toronto almost the whole area south of Bloor Street between
Bay Street and the Don River is in this condition. The act of re-
building on any single individual property is in itself insufficient
to stem the general process of decline. It therefore becomes
necessary to assemble blocks.of land of such proportions that the
reconstructed area would assume an entity and character of its
own. For such an operation public action is necessary in order to
acquire by expropriation those parcels of land which could not
be assembled by private interests. The authority for a municipal-
ity in Ontario so to assemble land is granted by the Planning Act
1946.°
For the purpose of a housing project a municipality, with the approval
of the Minister, may (a) acquire land within the municipality; (b) hold
land heretofore or hereafter acquired within the municipality; or (c) sell,
lease or otherwise dispose of land so acquired or held for a nominal or other
consideration to any person or governmental authority having power to
undertake housing projects.
This provision makes it possible to assemble and re-plan one or
more city blocks so that a new residential neighbourhood can be
created, unconfined by the previous boundaries of lots and street
lines. The assembly and re-planning of such land can be carried
out whether the building is to be done by a public housing au-
thority (such as is proposed for the Regent Park and other re-
development areas) or whether the housing is to be constructed
and operated by private interests. Private developers could not
take up such land profitably for housing development unless the
cost of land per dwelling unit was marked down to a level com-
parable with that of land in suburban areas where lots cost from
10 to 15 per cent of the total cost of a dwelling unit. It is argued,
however, that the municipality could ultimately profit from such
a procedure of land acquisition even if the re-planned site were
turned over to private developers for a nominal sum; it is said
that the increased revenue which a municipality may derive by
3Statutes of Ontario 1946, chap. 71, sect. 16,
A Programme for Metropolitan Toronto 35
taxing the thus improved values of the land and buildings would
ultimately compensate for the initial cost of land acquisition and
clearance. This happy outcome would depend, of course, upon
the relationship between the cost of acquisition and the economic
level of the occupants of the reconstructed area. It certainly
seems unlikely that housing tenanted by middle- and low-income
families could ever yield a tax revenue sufficient to pay off these
costs of acquisition.
At the present time the economics of this process of internal
reconstruction is exercising the minds of municipal authorities in
every major city on this continent. To date no formula seems to
have been conceived which would prevent the community as a
whole from having to accept the financial loss that must accom-
pany the redevelopment of obsolescent areas; redevelopment
can only take place if there is a marking-down of the values that
society has placed upon such land. This must perhaps be regarded
as a normal charge for urban depreciation which has been omitted
from our municipal bookkeeping during the previous historical
period of city expansion. A question arises, however, as to the
source of funds for meeting these costs. In the metropolitan com-
munity of Toronto there is obviously no logical reason why these
costs should be carried by those who happen to hold property
within the boundaries of the city itself; such a charge would in
fact only create a vicious circle and accelerate the flight to the
suburbs which is the original cause of the interna] decline. It
would be more logical, in fact, to regard this cost of urban re-
development as part of the price that must be paid for spreading
cities widely into marginal suburban land rather than developing
their interiors intensively. But in practical terms there is no way
in which these costs could now be charged to the whole group of
municipalities within the metropolitan area and it is inevitable
that contributions must be sought from some senior government.
The need for this source of funds is, indeed, already recognized
in the National Housing Act 1944, by provisions made specifically
for the clearance of slum areas but which, in principle, apply to
the larger process of urban redevelopment;* the federal govern-
86 HOUSES FOR CANADIANS
ment offers to pay half the'cost of land acquisition and clearance
provided that the land is to be developed “in accordance with an
official community plan” and provided the land is sold to a limited
dividend housing corporation.
The administrative machinery by which this process of urban
re-planning and redevelopment could be operated has yet to be
devised. It may be necessary to create a public utility corporation
or commission which would have the powers of expropriation and
the delegated authority of the municipality to assemble land and
dispose of it for housing purposes. Some American cities have
already assigned this function to their local public housing au-
thorities and some have created redevelopment commissions for
this purpose. This operation of land assemblage should be clearly
distinguished both from the planning function of a planning board
and the management function of a housing authority.
The administrative problems implicit in a programme of
housing replacement have been touched upon briefly here simply
in order to indicate the kind of agency which the municipality
will have to develop in order to deal with an important phase of
its housing programme. More will be said later of the functions
of a housing authority of the kind already established in Toronto.
Tue Diskostrion or New Hovusinc
Since there is virtually no land still left available for additional
residential building within the boundaries of the city of Toronto
4National Housing Act 1944, Section 12.
“In order to assist in the clearance, re-planning, re-habilitation and modern-
ization of slum areas or blighted or sub-standard areas in any municipality, the
Minister . . . may make grants to a municipality in order to assist in defraying
the cost to such municipality of acquiring and clearing, whether by condemnation
proceedings or otherwise, an area of land suitable as a location for a low cost or
moderate cost rental housing project... . No grant made under this section shall
exceed one half of the amount by which the cost of acquisition and clearance of
the land . . . exceeds the cost at which the land so acquired and cleared is sold...
for the purpose of constructing thereon ‘a rental housing project, and no grant shall
be made under their section unless the remainder of the excess is borne by the
municipality or jointly by the municipality and the government of the province in
which the municipality is situated.”
A Programme for Metropolitan Toronto 37
itself, almost all the additional housing required (as distinct from
replacements) will have to be built in the suburban municipal-
ities. There are now about 155,000 housing units in the city and
about 56,000 in the suburban areas; the addition of 50,000 units
to the suburban municipalities which may take place during the
post-war decade will therefore practically double their present
accommodation and raise their population to almost two-thirds
of that within the city itself. This represents an entirely new
balancing of the domestic economy of the whole metropolis and
introduces administrative and planning problems on a major
scale. The*present services, streets, and community plant of the
twelve suburban municipalities have to be developed for the
reception of a population twice the size of that for which present
services exist. There is now little improved and serviced land still
available and new capital is required for preparing building land.
Recent amendments to the National Housing Act 1944 have been
aimed to draw the funds of the insurance i a into this
venture.
In the first attempt to visualize the dimensions of the housing
shortage and the consequent size of the housing programme
which must be planned for the post-war years, great emphasis has
been placed upon the number of houses. We were told that
Canada should produce 80,000 houses in 1947 and 100,000 in
subsequent years. We have ourselves calculated that Toronto
needs to build about 50,000 additional houses in the next ten
years. But these purely quantitative estimates do not convey a
proper impression of the operation that has to be planned, for
housing is but one element in the composition of a residential
community. Simply to scatter 52,000 houses around the circum-
ference of Toronto would not by any means solve the housing
problem. For, in order that these households may operate it will
be necessary to supply them with streets, sewers, water and power
services, schools, shops, recreation areas, and all the other ameni-
ties of modern living.
In order that the housing programme may be carried out with
the utmost economy it is obviously necessary that houses should
38 HOUSES FOR CANADIANS
be placed on sites that can be provided with the essential services
at the least cost both to the occupants of the houses and to the
public in general. Houses placed on outlying or scattered sites
that cannot be integrated with the network of urban services
represent a wasteful form of development. Unfortunately there is
a centrifugal force that continually urges home-builders to build
outside the serviced areas of the metropolis; under the pressure
of high costs families of modest income are tempted to seek refuge
in undeveloped areas where taxes are lower and building regula-
tions are less strict. Both to these families and to the taxpaying
public this scattering of sub-standard housing is dangerous.
Sooner or later there is bound to come a demand for services to
be extended to such scattered sites, and these will have to be pro-
vided in a manner that will not follow the most logical and eco-
nomical plan. Meanwhile the very fact that the area is inade-
quately serviced and protected means that the owners of such
houses possess insecure assets; in times of economic distress they
find themselves in a particularly vulnerable position and become
the more easily a charge upon the municipality as a whole.
In Ontario some provision has been made for combating this
threat of scattered and premature suburban development through
the passage-of the Planning Act 1946.5 By the terms of this statute
each subdivision of land for sale as building lots has to receive
_the approval of the Minister of Planning and Development; a
proposed subdivision may be rejected if it is regarded as pre-
mature, or if the available utilities and municipal services are not
adequate, or if the subdivision does not conform with the official
plan for the area prepared by the local planning board. In this
way a restraint may be placed upon the most wasteful process of
urban development.
It is clear that the “end-product” of a housing programme is
not the construction of a specified number of housing units but
is the creation of a series of fully functioning communities com-
plete with all their operating services. The task of completing the
5Statutes of Ontario, 1946, chap. 71, sect, 25,
A Programme for Metropolitan Toronto 39
housing programme is in fact inseparable from the process of
community planning.
The planning boards established by municipalities, under the
authority of the Planning Act 1946, thus will have an essential
part to play in the development of Greater Toronto’s housing pro-
gramme for it will be their responsibility to designate the areas
for development and to determine the designs of the new com-
munities that are to be created. In order to complete the housing
programme both as economically as possible and as rapidly as
possible the process of production must be planned so that each
new residential area may successively come to completion before
the next area is opened up and serviced. This “timing” of succes-
sive developments is, perhaps, an aspect of community planning
to which too little attention has been given. In planning the con-
struction of new communities it is necessary not only to lay out
the sites but also to determine the sequence of operations. In this
sense community planning is similar to the planning of any other
kind of industrial process; it may be compared with the designing
of the process by which the component parts of automobiles are
delivered to the assembly line in a rational sequence so that the
finished products can be brought to completion as economically
and rapidly as possible. It has been pointed out above that the
“finished product” of housing production is not the individual
house but the operating community.
What is a community?
In the contemporary conception of town-planning a great city
such as Toronto consists of a number of neighbourhood com-
munities each of which may be regarded as a distinct social
organism. In its 1944 Report the Toronto City Planning Board
described a neighbourhood as “a more or less homogeneous area
large enough to function as a social unit and not too small to stand
on its own feet, with well-defined boundaries such as main roads,
railways, ravines etc... .” It is true that in the existing built-up
city these neighbourhoods are not always very clearly defined;
they overlap and merge into one another. But the Planning Board
was able to identify seventy-eight neighbourhoods within the
40 Housrs FOR CANADIANS
city boundaries, varying in size from 150 to 330 acres with an
average of about 250 acres. In the older parts of the city there
were found to be from 60 to 100 persons per acre—or a population
of about 20,000 in a 250 acre neighbourhood. In that more modern
part of the city which lies north of the Canadian Pacific Railway
North Toronto line there were found to be from 30 to 60 persons
per acre—or a population of 7,500 to 15,000 in a 250 acre neigh-
bourhood. ;
If the density of development in North Toronto, the most
modern section of the city, may be regarded as a reasonable
standard, then we may aim to achieve a similar standard in the
development of the present housing programme. To produce
50,000 houses may therefore be regarded as a community plan-
ning programme for the creation of about twenty-five neighbour-
hood communities, each containing a population of about 7,500
people living in about 2,000 housing units (3.75 persons per
household). Since, however, a considerable proportion of the
programme will be absorbed by the filling out of existing incom-
plete neighbourhood areas it would perhaps be safer to state that
twenty (and not twenty-five) new neighbourhood units are
required. .
A good deal of study of community organization has in recent
years been directed towards determining the most desirable size
of an operating residential unit or neighbourhood. About 2,000
households appear to provide a well-balanced community. This
number of households normally contains about the number of
children required to support a school of manageable proportions
and buys enough to keep a diversified group of retail stores in
business. It is big enough to require its own recreation area and
not so big as to make its own shops, schools, and other community
‘services too distant from any house in the neighbourhood.
With its population of 660,000 the city of Toronto has 85 pub-
lic schools (one per 7,764 population) and 16 secondary schools
(one per 41,250 population ). On this basis the school district con-
forms very conveniently with the suggested size of a neighbour-
hood. Each new community with a population of about 7,500 will
A Programme for Metropolitan Toronto Al
require one public school and a secondary will have to be provided
for each group of five neighbourhoods. In all, therefore, the 50,000
unit post-war housing programme implies the need for 25 public
schools and 5 secondary schools.
While it is generally agreed that the provision of open spaces
has been inadequate in the built-up area of the city there is no
absolute standard to determine the proportion of residential land
which should be dedicated as permanent open space. In its 1943
Report the Toronto City Planning Board presented some pro-
posals for acceptable standards on the basis of which it may be
calculated that residential areas containing 50,000 houses should
be provided with about 320 acres of open space. Each neighbour-
hood should have at least three acres developed as playgrounds
for children of pre-school and school age. Five open spaces each
of about thirty acres should be developed as playfields to serve
the young people in a group of neighbourhoods. And in addition
to these spaces planned for active recreation there should be a
reasonable contribution, perhaps 100 acres, towards the general
park system of the metropolitan area, preferably as an integral
part of a continuous inner green belt connected with the ravines
and natural landscape areas of the Don and Humber river
systems.
Each neighbourhood requires the service of a number of retail
stores. It has been the practice in the Toronto area to devote the
frontage of main traffic arteries to commercial use though this may
have litile relation either to the convenient accessibility of these
areas or to the amount of retail business that can be supported by
a neighbourhood or group of neighbourhoods. In the zoning of
land use within the new residential areas the local planning
boards will need to make a more precise study of these retail
requirements, It seems probable that a community of 2,000 house-
holds can be quite adequately served by about forty stores which
would require about five acres of land or frontage of about 1,400
feet. Considerations of traffic movement and convenient distri-
bution of these little shopping centres will recommend that they
should not be strung along traffic arteries but should be located
42, HOUSES FOR CANADIANS
in compact groups at strategic points. In all, not more than 125
acres of land should be required for this purpose.
In addition to these specific requirements other features of
residential communities will suggest themselves. Neighbourhood
theatres and churches must be allowed for and there will be a.
need for sites for a few light industries to provide local employ-
ment apart from the areas specifically zoned for industrial use.
The disposition of the new housing to be built in the Toronto
metropolitan area rests with the local planning boards under the
general coordination of the Metropolitan Planning Board.® It is
only necessary here to point out that the- effective assembly of
50,000 housing units so that they form a series of distinct opera-
ting communities each complete with its local services and
amenities, is an essential part of the planning of the housing pro-
gramme. The public should be able to see these new neighbour-
hood communities clearly defined on the plans published and
exhibited by the Metropolitan Planning Board and should be able
to see each designed community in turn progressing towards
completion. So far the only suburban municipalities which have
attempted to formulate such plans are the townships of Etobicoke
and North York; it is greatly to be hoped that this process will be
extended and supported by strong zoning and subdivision con-
trols before post-war building has got any further out of hand.
Community planning is a technical procedure requiring the
authority of legislation in order that the uses of land may be con-
trolled for the public good. Though Ontario municipalities are
fortunate in the possession of a Provincial Planning Act which
gives them a considerable degree of authority over urban de-
velopment, yet it must be said that the whole process of com-
munity planning is still in an early stage of maturity. The out-
standing problem is that the type of official plan which is entitled
to receive legislative authority takes the form of a zoning map.
The effort to simplify the zones of land use leads to the definition
of large areas each of which may be developed uniformly for
industry, for business or for some particular kind of housing—
:SAt present operating under the title of The Toronto and York Planning Board.
A Programme for Metropolitan Toronto 43
single-family houses or multiple dwellings. Though this procedure
is familiar and comparatively simple, yet it does not lend itself to
the organic development of neighbourhood patterns. The design
of a neighbourhood, containing a variety of dwelling types and a
variety of other buildings required to serve the community, can-
not be effectively expressed on a zoning map; there is, in fact, a
real danger that zoning control will in itself merely impose a
sterile uniformity upon residential areas. If urban development
is to take the form of planned neighbourhoods it will be necessary
to achieve a much closer coordination between the technical
staffs of planning boards and the actual developers of suburban
property, whether they may be private persons or public agencies.
The objectives of community planning have been referred to
here in their application to the suburban fringe of the city. The
same objectives of neighbourhood design are to be-sought also in
the redevelopment of the city’s interior parts. Toronto's City
Planning Board has already identified seventy-eight neighbour-
hoods within the boundaries of the city and is committed to a
policy of protecting them against intruding traffic and land uses
and emphasizing their identity in the gradual processes of civic
improvement.
If future generations are to enjoy the benefits of a city which
is economical to operate, is not continually threatened with in-
ternal decay, and which offers some of the delights of civilized
living, we must in this generation exert all our efforts to improve
the quality of the housing areas which are now spreading around
our great cities without form or design.
Tue Lack or RENTAL Housinc
There has been an increasing volume of housing production
in the Toronto metropolitan area during the last sixteen years as
the country has emerged from the economic depression. There
was a continuous increase of production from 1932 until 1941,
followed by a withdrawal during 1942, 1943, and 1944. (See
Table V.) In 1945 residential construction returned to its 1941
scale with the completion of 8,533 units followed by the -pro-
44 Houses ror CANADIANS
duction of 4,447 units in 1946 and 4,021 in 1947. The slight de-
cline during 1947 suggests that the peak of production under
present conditions of costs and incomes has now perhaps been
passed; unless some new element is introduced into the housing
programme, production is likely to decline to a volume consider-
ably lower than is required to fill the continuing needs of the
community. This might mean that production would stabilize
itself at a volume sufficient to accommodate the annual increase
of population but might not succeed in making good the remain-
ing shortage or in taking obsolete housing out of circulation.
The indication of a future decline in residential construction
may be attributed to a variety of causes. The most evident reason
is, of course, the buyers’ resistance to the continued increase of
building costs coupled with the dissipation of wartime savings on
the increased cost of living. The costs of building materials are
compared with the costs of living in Table VI. At the end of the
war the cost of living index was 120.8 and the building materials
index 144.4; but by October, 1947 the cost of living had risen to
142.2 while building materials had risen as high as 210.9. By the
end of 1947 the weighted index of materials and labour had
reached a level of 178; it must be said, however, that in spite of
this continued rise in building costs indices there are now some
indications of improvement. It has been observed by the Central
Mortgage and Housing Corporation that “comparable houses
built for sale showed a lessening of the construction period from
eleven months in 1946 to eight months in 1947,” The easier flow
of materials and the improved skills of new construction workers
represent an ultimate saving to the consumer which is not truly
represented in the indices.
A factor contributing to the lack of ETE in residential
building has been the very active demand for labour and materials
in the construction of business, industrial, and engineering pro-
jects. (See Table VII.) While the value of residential contracts
awarded in the Toronto metropolitan area has not increased dur-
TAnnual Report of the Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation. (Ottawa,
1947).
A Programme for Metropolitan Toronto 45
ing the three post-war years (in 1945 $26,000,000 and in 1947
$21,000,000) the value of all other kinds of construction contracts
has doubled (rising from $26,000,000 in 1945 to $53,000,000 in
1947). The more attractive and secure type of employment offered
in the construction of large buildings has removed from the resi-
dential field a very large labour force which could otherwise have
been engaged in the construction of housing. Much controversy
has arisen over the legitimacy of attempting to restrain business
and industrial building during a period of acute housing shortage.
The federal government has disclaimed any responsibility for
such regulatory action and has declared that the municipalities —
must exercise any controls that could be devised. But in a com-
plex municipal structure such as that of metropolitan Toronto,
containing thirteen individual municipal governments, the diffi-
culties of determining a common course of action are obviously
insuperable, particularly in view of the fact that all municipalities
welcome industrial and commercial buildings as revenue-produc-
ing assets whereas housing for the middle and low income
families represents expenses for the provision of schools and other
municipal services. With their anxiety to look after the welfare of
the un-housed families in their communities and at the same time
benefit the existing taxpayers, this dilemma of the municipalities
may be described as pitiful. For the city of Toronto itself the
situation is particularly poignant; the city has to hold within its
boundaries the great mass of un-housed families and yet it has
no vacant land on which permanent housing could be built for
them. If the city of Toronto itself were to prohibit certain classes
of non-residential building there would be no assurance that the
labour and materials so released would be used for the construc-
tion of housing in the suburban municipalities who might simply
benefit themselves by continuing their programmes of industrial
- and commercial building. As a practical operation, the deliberate
diversion of labour and materials from non-residential construc-
` tion into housing construction obviously could only be effected
by a senior government and, specifically, by a governmental body
which was already committed to responsibility for the total hous-
46 HoUsES FOR CANADIANS
ing programme and had the facilities for directing its develop-
ment through financial and legislative provisions.
As the post-war housing programme got under way one out-
standing characteristic rapidly emerged. That was the lack of
new housing built for rent. When the 1946 building season
opened, 57 per cent of the houses under construction were being
built for sale by speculative builders, 25 per cent were being built
for owners, and only 18 per cent were being built for rent.
(Virtually the only new rental housing being provided in the area
were the three projects, each. containing 200 dwellings, built by
Wartime Housing Limited for the families of veterans.) This
immediately represented a serious gap in the programme since
at the end of the war there were in the city about ten thousand
fewer rental housing units than there had been when the war
started. i
In 1930 about half of all the dwellings within the City of
Toronto were houses occupied by their owners, the other half
being rented houses and various forms of multiple housing such
as duplexes, apartments, etc. From 1930 till 1940 there was a con-
tinuous decline in home ownership till in 1941 owner-occupied
houses represented only 41.3 per cent of all the dwellings in the
city. Since then, under the pressure of the housing shortage, there
has been a marked increase in home-ownership, the proportion
having risen to 47.1 per cent by the autumn of 1944. The com-
petitive bidding of those looking for a home in the congested city
caused prices of houses to advance sharply. Rent control pre-
vented landlords from getting what they regarded as the full
earnings from their properties and they took the opportunity
offered by the unrestricted sales market. Consequently many
long-time tenants faced the prospect of either moving or buying.
Between 1941 and 1945 more than 8,000 houses, previously
rented, came into owner-occupation. Consequently at the end of
the war there were about ten thousand fewer rental housing units
than there had been when the war started. This significant change
of tenure took place in spite of the wartime orders which re-
stricted evictions of tenants.
A Programme for Metropolitan Toronto 47
The post-war concentration upon the production of houses for
sale rather than for rent is to be seen in the type of accommoda-
tion that has been built. In the Toronto metropolitan area during
1945 and 1946, 89.7 per cent of all units completed were single
family houses (a few of them semi-detached), only 3.4 per cent
were in the form of duplexes or apartments and 6.9 per cent were
conversions. The types of accommodation provided are shown in
detail on Table VIII.
The efforts to produce rental housing through the agency of
Housing Enterprises Limited (a limited dividend housing cor-
poration created by the federal government and the insurance
companies ) and the subsequent withdrawal of this agency in the
spring of 1947 on account of high costs and rents, dramatized the
fact that the production of new rental housing is not under exist-
ing circumstances a profitable undertaking. Although there are
immediate prospects of full occupancy and adequate returns, par-
ticularly since the removal of rent control from new accom-
modation in July, 1947, any cautious investor has to reckon with
the possibility that immediate profits might be more than wiped
out by the future competition of housing built during a later
period of lower construction costs.
The experience of the post-war years certainly indicates that
under existing conditions the necessary supply of rental housing
cannot be produced by private builders. It is the absence of this
element in the housing programme that accounts for the failure
to sustain and amplify the volume. of production to the requisite
level. The means by which a large volume of rental housing could
be produced thus becomes one of the most important features of
the nation’s housing affairs.
Chapter Three: HOUSING COSTS ©
Tue Cost oF a 5,000 Unrr ANNUAL PROGRAMME
Durme 1946 the value of residential construction in the Toronto
metropolitan area was somewhat more than $26,000,000 for a pro-
duction of about 4,500 housing units, while in 1947 construction
contracts amounted to more than $21,000,000 and 4,000 units were
built. If the programme were maintained at an annual volume of
5,000 units the expenditures on construction would thus pre-
sumably be about $30,000,000 a year. From one point of view this
may be regarded as an alarming cost to be met out of the income
of the community. From another point of view it may be regarded
as a great source of employment and business for the community.
To begin with, the construction of 5,000 housing units represents
jobs for one year for about 14,000 men of whom about 6,800 would
be employed on the actual building sites, while about 8,000 would
_ be employed in the industries supplying building materials and in
the transportation services." The annual pay-roll of construction
workers would be more than $11,000,000. Orders for building
materials to manufacturers and distributors, including transpor-
tation costs to the site, would vary between $14,400,000 and
$17,500,000 with nine major supply industries participating:
(a) Cement, gravel, and sand... $1,220,000
(b) Brick, tile, and stone... 795,000
(c) Lumber and its products........0.cccc eee tee
(d) Lath, plaster, stucco, insulation materials... . 1,805,000
(e) Roofing materials.......00.... cee teeeeteeee 465,000
(£) Paint and glass... 510,000
(g) Plumbing and heating equipment.................... 2,970,000
(h) Electrical equipment and fixtures.................... 620,000
(i) Other building materials (steel, ete.).............. 790, 000
1Figures in this paragraph are derived from material presented in Manpower
and Material Requirements for a Housing Program in Canada, a report prepared
by the Department of Reconstruction and Supply (Ottawa, 1946).
48
Housing Costs 49
In addition to these expenditures on labour and materials, con-
tractors and builders would earn in overhead and profit about
$3,000,000 and real estate transactions would amount also to about
$3,000,000. At the same time professional people, especially archi-
tects, lawyers, engineers, and surveyors, would be busily occupied
and there would be an expanded volume of business for the lend-
ing institutions responsible for financing the major part of the
housing programme.
In order to place in its proper perspective the proposal for a
$30,000,000 (annual) housing construction industry it should
perhaps be recalled that during the five pre-war years 1935-39
inclusive, the housing industry in the Toronto area was operating
at an annual average of only $13,500,000 and the construction
industry as a whole (residential, business, industrial, and engi-
neering projects combined) averaged only $23,178,000 a year.
This comparison may cause some ‘doubt to be placed upon the
ability of metropolitan Toronto’s economy to carry such a large
residential construction programme.
This comparison between the scale of the building industry
in the pre-war years and the scale of operations which is now
required should not, however, lead to the conclusion that the
present programme is beyond our capacities. The fact is that
between 1935 and 1939 there was substantial unemployment
among construction workers and the construction industry was by
no means working at its full capacity. Furthermore there are now
improving prospects for a supply of skilled construction workers.
During the last two years there has been a steady stream of men
passing through vocational and apprenticeship training in the
construction trades; during 1947 there have been between 7,000
and 8,000 in training throughout Canada. Also, during 1947 more
than 1,500 skilled construction workers immigrated to Canada.
In addition to this development of building skills the increase in
production of building materials has been not unimpressive. The
production of bath-tubs, for instance, has risen from 56,000 units
in 1946 to 80,000 in 1947. Building bricks, though still a scarce
commodity, have increased! steadily in production from 190 mil-
50 HouskEs ror CANADIANS
lion in 1945 to 278 million in 1946 and nearly 290 million in 1947.
It is evident that the building industry has capacities and re-
sources which it has never yet been able to bring into full opera-
tion. It may be anticipated that, in future years, it is not the in-
capacity of the building industry which is likely to slow down the
progress of the housing programme; the major task which lies
ahead will be the maintaining and supporting of the demand which
will enable the industry to produce at its real capacity.
Tet COMPONENTS OF Housing Costs?
To the owner of housing the costs are made up of five com-
ponents: the cost of building, land, money, maintenance, and
taxes. Although the owner or purchaser of a house may meet
these costs in various ways and at various intervals yet they must
ultimately be paid out of the current income of the occupant. It
is therefore convenient to think of these costs as being paid in
regular monthly instalments as rent. The cost of carrying a $7,000
TABLE A
Gross Montsiy Cost oF A $7,000 Housing Unir
Monthly Payment Per Cent
(a) Building
Cost of Construction $6,225 $22.94 39
(b) Land
Cost of Improved Lot $775 3.23 6
(e) Money
$2,000 Cash at 3% : 15.68 27
$5,000 N.H.A. Loan at 414%
(d) Maintenance
. At $80 Per Annum 6.66 11
(e) Taxes
At 2% of $7,000 11.66 17
$60.17 100
2The figures used in this section are based upon data specially provided by
the Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation. This data covered all houses for
the construction of which loans had been made under the National Housing Act
1944 in the Greater Toronto area during 1946. The interpretation placed upon
this data is that of the author and no responsibility is attached to the Central
Mortgage and Housing Corporation.
Housing Costs ; | 51l
housing unit over a twenty-year period can be broken down into
the components shown in Table A (page 50):
It should be noted that in practice the private owner-occupant
of a new house does not have to meet these full costs out of in-
come. On a $7,000 house a purchaser is normally required to
make an initial cash payment of about $2,000. This is drawn from
his savings and it is not to be presumed that an owner-occupant
would return this sum to savings or pay interest on it. It is, how-
ever, one of the component costs and the purchaser has in effect
forfeited the interest which such savings would have yielded. In
rental housing, therefore, this item must appear within the gross
monthly cost to be covered. by rent payments. But if, however,
this cash payment is not included within the monthly payments
that must be met by an owner-occupant the current costs would
appear as follows: (here the $2,000 has been deducted from the
‘cost of construction in item (a) and the interest on the $2,000
has been omitted from item (c) ).
TABLE B
Montuty Cost or $7,000 Housinc UNIT TO OWNER-OCCUPANT _
Monthly Payment Per Cent
(a) Building
Cost of Construction $6,225 $17.60 35
Less $2,000 Cash Payment
(b) Land
Cost of Improved Lot $775 3.23 7
(c) Money
$5,000 N.H.A. Loan at 444% 10.68 22
(d) Maintenance
At $80 Per Annum 6.66 18
(e) Taxes
At 2% of $7,000 11.66 28
$49.83 © 100
From the above break-down it is evident that reductions in
construction costs offer the best prospects of reducing housing
expenses since the building itself is the largest single item and the
cost.of the loan required to pay for building is the next most sub-
52 _ Houses ror CANADIANS
stantial element. And since the cost of borrowing money is such
a prominent feature it is also evident that successful efforts to
fortify the security of loans and so reduce interest rates may bring
substantial savings to the householder. Ultimately, of course, the
security of loans must depend upon the employment and solvency
of the occupants of housing and so is deeply involved in the whole
national programme for full employment and social security, But
_ through the operation of the housing programme itself it may be
possible to provide for greater financial security and a consequent
reduction in the current expenses of housing; this may be achieved
by improvements in the fabric of the house and in its setting
within the community. The quality of housing may, in fact, come
to be an essential factor in reducing its current expenses to
occupants. This theme runs through the following discussion of
the five component items in housing costs.
(a) Building. The cost of constructing a house depends upon
its size and upon the price of the materials and workmanship
employed. In general principle it must be remarked that a cheaper
house does not necessarily reduce the cost to the consumer in
view of the fact that housing expenses are items on a monthly
budget and therefore depend not so much upon the initial capital
sum as upon the length of time over which the amortisation pay-
ments can be spread. The better the design, the substance, and
the environment of a house the longer will it remain useful and
attractive and therefore the less should each successive occupant
have to pay towards its initial capital cost. A $5,000 loan available
under the terms of the National Housing Act 1944 costs $31.52
a month (interest and principal) if spread over twenty years but
would cost only $25.21 a month if spread over thirty years.
It is clear that houses of poor quality and temporary character,
the costs of which must be paid off quickly while they retain some
desirable characteristics, may ultimately prove to be the most
expensive to the community. The ability of architects, manufac-
turers, and community-planners to design housing which in
twenty and thirty years’ time will be almost as desirable as it is
today, may prove to be the most effective step towards reducing
the current expenses of housing.
_ Housing Costs | 53
When it is realized that the cost of building represents less
than 40 per cent of total housing expenses it becomes evident that
the individual items of materials and labour represent but minor
_ factors in the monthly payments. Even a 20 per cent reduction in
the cost of labour (labour represents about 40 per cent of the
cost of construction) would only reduce the monthly price of a
$7,000 house by about $2.00.
(b) Land. The cost of suburban building lots in the Toronto
area range between $200 and $1,000. For all houses built in the
area during 1946 under the terms of the National Housing Act
1944 the prices of land fell into the following groups:
TABLE C
Prices or Lors FoR Hovses Burst Tarouca NATIONAL Housing
ACT Loans, TORONTO METROPOLITAN AREA, 1946
Price Range Per Cent of Lots in Each Price Range
200- 299 2.8
300- 399 5.1
400- 499 10.0
500- 599 10.0
600- 699 21.8
700- 799 11.0
800- 899 26.3
900- 999 10.2
1,000-1,099 . 2.8
100.0
Ei. a
Land costs may be reduced through the opportunity to use
sites which have not acquired an inflated speculative or com-
mercial value and which may be built upon without expensive
preparations of grading and drainage. But if the attempt to find
cheap land leads to placing houses at considerable distances from
centres of employment the apparent saving to the consumer may
prove to be offset by added costs of transportation. Furthermore,
land which has not acquired considerable speculative value is
only to be found in areas which do not possess urban services and
amenities; the eventual need to supply these services and amen-
ities may likewise impose unexpected costs upon the occupants
of houses and taxpayers in general.
54 : Houses ror CANADIANS
(c) Money. The cost of borrowing capital for the construc-
tion of a house and the acquisition of building land represents
about one-quarter of all housing expenses. Through the procedure
established in Canada by the three successive National Housing
Acts and through the present administration of the Central Mort-
gage and Housing Corporation much has been done to stabilize
this formidable component of housing costs. A crown corporation
now shares with private financial institutions the risks of lending
capital; the credit of the Dominion of Canada has been brought
into play in order to make building money less expensive.
C.M.H.C. has set up an elaborate nation-wide administrative
organization to see that its loans are secure; by actual inspection
of houses constructed there is an attempt to establish that the
sound qualities of a dwelling will last throughout the period of
the loan. By appraising the purchasers’ incomes their probable
ability to make periodic payments is judged and an attempt made
to prevent borrowers from assuming obligations beyond their
capacities,
The rate of interest required must be sufficient to meet three
charges: (1) The normal rate of interest on investment capital;
(2) The security against the failure of the borrower; and (8) The
administrative charges. It is clear that private financial institu-
tions could not stay in the housing mortgage business at a rate
of interest lower than that which obtains today. Any prospect that
interest rates.could be reduced to 3% per cent, as has sometimes
been suggested, must be based on the willingness of the public
to use public revenue for supplementing the cost of operating
housing loans. The entry of the Central Mortgage and Housing
Corporation into the field, with the aid of public capital, already
makes it essential that the loans so placed should be protected
against the risks of unemployment and neighbourhood deteriora-
tion. It should certainly be realized that at a time when the short-
age of housing, coupled with high building costs, is forcing many
householders to assume loan obligations which are dangerously
near the limit of their financial capacity, the risks involved in
lending building money are very great. Only history will be able
Housing Costs | | 55
to prove whether the present 4% per cent interest rate is sufficient
to cover these risks and the costs of administration.
In addition to the interest that must be paid on money loaned,
the purchaser of a house is today required to make a substantial
cash payment. For houses built in the Toronto area during 1946
under the terms of the National Housing Act 1944 this payment
has represented from one-fifth to one-third of the capital cost of
the house and lot.
TABLE D
CASH CONTRIBUTIONS OF BORROWERS, Loans MADE UNDER NATIONAL
Hovusine Act 1944. TORONTO METROPOLITAN AREA, 1946
- Price Range, Average Per Cent
House and Lot | Cash Payment of Total Cost
$5,500-6,500 $1,587 25
$6,500-7,500 ~. $1995 29
more than $7,500 $2,731 33
In other words the loan on a $6,000 housing unit has not usually
exceeded $4,500, the loan on a $7,000 unit has not exceeded
$5,000 and the loan on a $8,000 unit has not exceeded $5,300.
These substantial cash payments which borrowers have had to
make have arisen largely of course because of the distinction. that
has been made between the actual cost of a house and lot and
the “lending value,” which is a smaller sum regarded by the loan
appraisor as the true value of the house. During 1946 “lending
values” in the Toronto area ranged between 80 and 90 per cent
of the estimated actual cost of the house and lot. For instance a
house and lot actually costing $8,300 would be assigned a “lend-
ing value” of $7,000 on which a loan of $5,700 would be made
(that being the legal maximum loan for a property valued at
$7,000); the purchaser would consequently be required to make
a-cash contribution of $2,600.
The element of the cash contribution in housing loans has
created a somewhat misleading comparison between the costs of
home-ownership and rental housing. To obtain a strictly com-
parable analysis of the component costs the house-purchaser
56 Houses FOR CANADIANS
should include the interest and the retirement of the capital sum
made as. a cash payment. (The implications of this point are
brought out in Tables A and B.) For if this cash payment were
not made, the.interest thereon would enable the householder to
occupy rental housing at a proportionately higher monthly rate.
(d) Maintenance. The expenses of keeping a house in good
order and repair usually occur at such irregular intervals that few
home-owners regard them as part of the monthly and annual cost
of housing. They are none the less very real costs, the proportions
of which are inversely related to the durability and cost of the
original structure of a dwelling. It costs less to build with perish-
able materials ‘but costs more to defend them ‘against deteriora-
tion. For the security of the lending institutions and the welfare
of future generations of occupants it is essential that physical
deterioration should be held in check; the process of obsolescence
is the most serious drain on housing supply and leads to costs of
replacement which will ultimately fall upon the community at
- large. l
In large-scale rental housing the costs of maintenance are
often taken to be $100 annually per housing unit. A figure of $80
annually has been taken here to provide adequately for repairs,
replacements, decoration, and other normal items of upkeep re- -
quired by the small home owner.
(e) Taxes. The streets, utilities, schools, parks, and other
services that are required by householders are paid for through
property taxes. Without these services a household could not
function; the amenities of the neighbourhood that are largely
created by these municipal services form part of the value of a
house that must be paid for. It is widely believed. that since a
large proportion of the municipal tax revenue is spent by the local
government on services not directly associated with real property,
that these taxes should not be based on property values and.be-
come an element in housing costs. But it may equally well be
argued that all community services which make a city more desir-
able to live in and work in must, however indirectly, influence the
value of every house within its area.
Housing Costs 57
It is difficult to make generalizations about the cost of local
taxes because these vary so much between one municipality and
another and between different districts in the same municipality,
and they also vary over the time during which mortgage pay-
ments are being made. The principal cause of variation is the
method of paying for local improvements in newly developed
areas; these are commonly assessed against properties in a new
residential area over a period of about five years after which the
rate of taxation reverts to a normal mill-rate on the assessed value.
In the absence of any better uniform figure which can be used,
it has here been assumed that the taxes on new houses represent
annual payments of about 2 per cent of the total value of a pro-
perty. In other words the taxes on a $6,000 house are about $120
a year and the taxes on a $7,000 house are about $140 a year.
It should be observed that it is now common practice for local
taxes to be paid by the lending institution which has placed a
mortgage on a new house. The purchaser’s monthly payments
include payments for taxes. This procedure protects the mortgage
holder from finding that a debt has accumulated against a pro-
perty on account of unpaid taxes.
Tae COMPONENTS OF CONSTRUCTION COSTS
In 1943 a survey was undertaken by the Dominion Govern-
ment’s housing agency to determine the relative proportions of
the costs of materials, on-site labour, overhead, and profits in the
building of houses.* The analysis, based on the experience of a
large number of contractors throughout Canada who had been
lately engaged in residential building, yielded the following
ratios:
Cost of materials 50-55 per cent
Cost of on-site labour 35-40 per cent
Overhead and profits 10 per cent
The experience of post-war building seems to indicate that a
higher proportion of costs should be attributed to overhead and
30. J. Firestone: The Labour Value of the Building Dollar. A report made
for the Housing Administration, Department of Finance. (Ottawa, 1943).
58 Houses For CANADIANS
profits, particularly during a period of reorganization when build-
ers are faced with the hazards arising out of uncertainties in the
supply of both materials and skilled labour. On the whole it
appears reasonable now to attribute costs of construction to
materials, on-site labour, and overhead in the proportions of 50,
35 and 15. On this basis a house which contains materials costing
$4,000 would consume $2,800 in labour costs on the site and
would carry $1,200 in overhead and profits representing a total
cost to the purchaser of $7,000.
The costs of house-building vary in relation with the size and
plan of the house and also in relation with the materials of which
it is built. Since there is an infinite number of possible variations
in the form and substance of a house it is extremely difficult to
present. simple comparable generalizations about the cost of
building. In order to make valid comparisons between the costs
of building in solid brick and the costs of building a wood-frame
dwelling it would be necessary to compare two houses of similar
size and plan constructed under identical circumstances. Actual
building experience does not offer the opportunity to make such
scientific comparisons.
The housing units created in the Toronto metropolitan area
in the post-war years may be conveniently classified under five
different types of construction: wood frame with wood siding or
shingles; wood frame and brick veneer; cinder or cement blocks
and stucco; brick facing and masonry blocks; and solid brick.
About one-third of all the houses built in the area have been con-
structed of solid brick, about one-quarter have been of wood
frame construction, and another quarter have been built of
masonry blocks with a brick facing. (See Table IX.)
Although it is not possible to determine the costs of all these
houses which were built by many contractors under many differ-
ent circumstances, yet it is possible to formulate some general
comparative figures through the use of representative examples.
This method was used in a recent study published by the Depart-
ment of Reconstruction and Supply entitled Manpower and
Material Requirements for a Housing Program in Canada. Here
Housing Costs 59
the “representative” examples were taken to be housing units of
a desirable character constructed in accordance with the stan-
dards required for obtaining loans under the National Housing
Act 1944. For such “representative” housing units specifications
of materials were prepared so that comparisons could be made
between houses constructed of different materials but all of the
same size and accommodation. For this purpose the sizes of the
representative examples have been taken as follows:
Cubic Feet Number of Rooms
Single Family House 16,000 6
Multiple Unit Dwelling 15,000 58
(The representative “multiple unit dwelling” is assumed to be one
living unit within a building containing three dwellings; its cost
therefore represents one-third of the total cost of such a building, )
The material specifications of each representative house have
been classified into 63 items under 10 headings:
Cement, gravel, and sand
Brick, tile, and stone
Lumber and its products
Lath, plaster, and insulation materials
Roofing materials
Paint and glass
Plumbing equipment and fixtures
Heating equipment and fixtures
Electrical equipment and fixtures
10, Other materials.
Prices in the Toronto area (December 1946 to February 1947)
were obtained for all of the items specified and these were
assembled to give the total cost of materials required for the con-
struction of eight different types of dwelling unit, five types of
single family house, and three types of multiple unit. Two ex-
amples of these detailed schedules are shown in Tables X and XI.
These schedules are identical with those used in the study en-
titled Manpower and Material Requirements for a Housing Pro-
gram in Canada, but it was found that costs in Toronto at the turn
of the year (1946-47) were in all cases higher than those which
CO MON Mor wh
60 Housks FoR CANADIANS
had been assembled for the Canadian study published in Septem-
ber, 1946. These total costs, of course, require further modifica-
tion as the prices of building materials change during subsequent
months.
To the costs of materials for each type of house have finally
been added the proportionate costs of labour and of contractor's
overhead, thus obtaining a figure for the total cost of each repre-
sentative type of dwelling. These compilations are shown on
Tables XI[(A) and XII(B); in the former table the proportionate
percentages of materials, labour, and overhead have been taken
as 50, 35, and 15 respectively, while in the latter table they have
been taken as 52.5, 37.5, and 10 per cent respectively. The total
costs have been summarized in Table E, following, based on the
proportions used in Table XII(B). Here also are shown the costs
per cubic foot.
TABLE E
Costs oF CONSTRUCTING REPRESENTATIVE TYPES OF DWELLING IN THE
TORONTO AREA, JANUARY, 1947
Total Cost Cost per
Type of Dwelling "of Unit Cubic Foot
Single Family Houses of 16,200 cubic feet
(a) Wood frame with siding $7,344 45.4 cents
(b) Wood frame with brick veneer 7,712 47.6
(c) Masonry blocks and stucco 7,278 44.9
(d) Masonry blocks, brick facing 7,952 49.0
(e) Solid brick 8,028 49.5
Multiple Unit Dwellings of 15,000 cubic feet
(£) Wood frame with siding $5,405 36.5 cents
(g) Masonry blocks, brick facing 5,472, 86.4
(h) Solid brick 5,529 86.8
The costs of construction given above have been derived from:
(a) Schedules of costs of materials of which two examples are given in
Tables X and XI;
(b) Compilations of materials, labour, and overhead costs in the pro-
portions of 52.5, 37.5, and 10 per cent respectively as shown in
Table XIIB. -
The schedules of materials given in Tables X and XI give
some suggestion of the great diversity of operations that are set
Housing Costs 61
in motion by the decision to build a house. There must be
gathered together on the building site a great variety of materials
brought from many different parts of the country and transported
by many different agencies. Some of these materials are already
manufactured, some of them are roughly finished, and some of
them reach the site in their raw state. A great variety of skills and
tools are then required for fashioning these materials and assemb-
_ ling them into the form of a house. The very diversity of these
operations—the number of primary producers, manufacturers,
tradesmen, and transporting agencies which are involved—all con-
tributes to the ultimate complexity of costs which is widely spread
and deeply rooted in the economy and wage structure of the
nation. It is this very complex nature of the building process that
makes it so difficult to identify where economies could most
profitably be sought. Critical observers of the building industry
have only been able to agree that, within the traditional processes
of house building, there is no one simple approach to reducing
costs. “Any considerable cost reduction,” declares an eminent
American authority on the subject, “must come from an accumula-
tion of many relatively minor items, no one of which, taken by
itself, is of outstanding importance.”* The truth of this statement
may be illustrated by the following examples showing the ap-
proximate percentages by which the total construction cost of a
dwelling unit would be reduced as the result of a 20 per cent
reduction in the cost of various component items.°
Lumber, at the site... orui A 4.6%
Plumbing materials, at the site..........0...... seeds etchant 1.2
Heating materials, at the site l... 9
Cement, gravel and sand, at the site... ee 8
Carpenters’ Wages ioler eSa iA 2.8
Plumbers’ Wages .........ccccccccccceseesseseeeseeneesneesnenseseeseetens 1.0
Wages of skilled workers in general.....0..0.0.0.0ce . 5.8
Wages of unskilled and semi-skilled workers.................. 1.7
General construction overhead and profit...20.0.0.0.000.0. 2.0°
4Miles E. Colean: American Housing (New York, Twentieth Century Fund,
1944) p, 52.
5Figures based on component costs developed in Firestone, Labour Value of
Building Dollar, quoted above.
62, FLOUSES FoR CANADIANS
A 20 per cent reduction in plumbing materials would reduce
the total cost of constructing a dwelling by only 1.2 per cent, and
a 20 per cent reduction in the price of lumber, by far the largest
single item in house construction costs, would reduce the total
cost by no more. than 4.6 per cent.
From time to time it is claimed that high costs of construction
can be attributed to this or that element in the building process.
It is at the present time a commonplace to say that the produc-
tivity of labour is to be blamed; it is said that construction work-
ers are not performing a day’s useful labour for a day’s wage.
Though there may be some truth in this, the significance of any
such individual item of costs is diminished in importance when it
is considered in relation to all other elements in the cost of con-
struction. The few examples quoted above simply serve to illus-
trate this all'too obvious fact that lower costs of construction
cannot be achieved by any one facile policy; they must await the
concurrence of many independent events which may influence
prices and efficiency in those many economic activities directly
or indirectly associated with the building process.
Tue NATURE OF THE BUILDING INDUSTRY
Any serious consideration of the costs of building houses seems
to lead to the conclusion that no really significant changes in the
levels of costs are likely to be achieved without some revolution-
ary changes in the building process itself. In the simplest terms,
that process consists of the movement of materials from their
primary source into the finished building with labour being ap-
plied to the fabrication of these materials at various stages along
the line. The ultimate cost of a building is, in fact, made up of the
accumulated costs of moving the materials, plus the accumulated
costs of the Jabour that has been applied to those materials, plus
the accumulated overhead and profit of all those who have
handled the materials en route. It is clear therefore that the
efficiency and economy of the building process is most likely to
be improved by efforts to smooth the flow of materials and to con-
Housing Costs 63
centrate the work of fabrication at the fewest possible points
along the line.
A study recently made by the United States National Housing
Agency revealed the fact that some 40 per cent of the costs of
materials at the site is attributable to charges for distribution and
transportation, while the remaining 60 per cent is accountable to
the costs that accumulate up to and including the process of
manufacture.’ After leaving the manufacturers warehouse it is
common procedure for building materials to be shipped again to
a retailer and stored again before being finally delivered to the
site for assembly into a building. This does not apply of course,
to all kinds of building materials, some of which are delivered
directly to the site by the manufacturers and so save the inter-
mediary costs of transportation, storage, and handling. But the
need for an elaborate system of distribution has been made neces-
sary by the characteristically small scale of the firms undertaking
the actual construction of houses. House-building has not at-
tracted large-scale construction firms and the field has been left
almost entirely to the small home-builder whose organization can
quickly adapt itself to the fluctuating demand for housing. The
small speculative builder undertakes the erection of only a few
houses at a time, saving the cost of managerial overhead and office
space and protecting himself from market uncertainties by keep-
ing his output in line with the immediate demand of prospective
purchasers. Under such circumstances it has been impossible to
smooth out the flow of building materials and simplify the process
of production. Fundamental changes in the process can only be
brought about through the entry of large-scale producers into the
housing industry, and they could only enter upon such a business
if they could anticipate a continuing market which would justify
the necessary capitalization. Since the expectation of such market
conditions has never yet seemed justified, the organization of the
residential building industry has stagnated. This experience seems
6National Housing Agency, Housing Costs (Washington, D.C. December,
1944).
64 ; HousEs FOR CANADIANS
to indicate that no great revolutionary changes and economies
can take place unless governmental authority can either guarantee
the housing market or be prepared. to capitalize the housing in-
dustry itself. The difficulty of bringing large-scale fabricating
industries into operation has now been demonstrated in the
United States where even during the housing shortage of 1946
pre-fabricators were unable to raise capital privately and had to
obtain funds from the government’s Reconstruction’ Finance Cor-
poration in order to establish and equip their production plants.
It may be said, however, that if there were an assured demand
for its products a large-scale housing industry could be organized
with private capital. Is it possible that this might be brought
about by the introduction of a public housing programme which
would strongly supplement and reinforce the private market for’
housing?
The hope that substantial economies could be achieved by a
more industrialized. process of house-building is suggested by a
comparison of the labour content in the cost of making a house
and in the costs of various manufactured products. Table F shows
that the percentage labour content in the value of manufactured
goods in general averages 18 per cent. Compared with the labour `
costs of house-building, 35 per cent for on-site labour alone, this
points to the conclusion that residential building has not yet
acquired the characteristic economies of industrial technology.
The principal reason for this contrast lies, of course, in the fact
that a house is immobile and its final assembly has at present to
be done piece by piece, out on the site, under all the hazards of
weather, and without permanent equipment. It has not been pos-
sible to apply to residential construction the assembly line system
with tasks broken down into simple and comparatively unskilled
operations; in residential building the seecmbly line is fixed and the
workers move.
It is only when large-scale projects are planned that there are
opportunities to introduce important features of industrial organi-
zation aimed to reduce the high labour costs in the building
process. First of all, by standardizing dimensions and details it
Housing Costs 65
TABLE F |
LABOUR Cost AS A PERCENTAGE OF THE TOTAL’ VALUE OF
VARIOUS CLASSES OF FInisHep MANUFACTURED Propucts*
House (Labour on site only) :...0.0.ccc ee! 35-40 %
Chemical products ieit a ie 15
Non-metallic mineral products... 11
Non-ferrous metal products ...............- DONE 15
Tron, productgarantie AE a nS 28
Wood and paper products... rererere 20
Textiles and textile products... 19
Animal product .....0..00.cccccccccccceeeetsssteceecceeceeseueeneee 9
Vegetable products... ccecc ese cceeeceseeeartentteees 10
Miscellaneous product. ............ccccee ccc cseeteeeeesteeees 19
Average oo... a EN a tocol Sele th dll Mather bates 18%
“Derived from Statistics in Canada Year Book, 1946, pp. 400-405.
becomes possible to place a greater proportion of the finishing
work under factory conditions where the work can proceed at a
steady flow throughout the seasons, uninterrupted by weather
conditions and the irregularities of the market. Ultimate econ-
omies are also to be sought by fabricating wall sections off the
site and simplifying the elaborate form of structure which has
been evolved under the conditions of hand assembly. At the
present time the basic form of house building is a structural
framework to which are applied layers of interior and exterior
insulating “skins” each applied by different tradesmen—brick-
layers, carpenters, plasterers, and painters. In this conception of
a structure there has been little advance during the age of indus-
trialization. We now await the results of experiments being pre-
pared at the National Research Council in Ottawa which may
lead to a system of assembly lending itself to partial factory pro-
duction and providing a kind of industrialized residential con-
struction suitable for Canadian conditions.
Whatever economies may be achieved by applying more of
the necessary labour to building materials before they reach the
site, there will always remain a relatively high proportion of on-
site labour costs for assembly. Here again there are economies
that arise logically out of large-scale projects. Efficiency may be
66 - Housrs FoR CANADIANS
gained by the repetition of familiar tasks; by planning the pro-
duction of a large group of houses it is possible to move working
teams from one unit to another in sequence as each process is
completed. The building work can be carefully broken down into
a number of operations for each of which the necessary personnel
and equipment can be brought into action as each unit in turn
passes through the successive phases in its assembly and com-
pletion. In Canada we have already made some attempt to gain
efficiency through the building of groups of houses; the “inte-
grated” housing scheme sponsored by. the Central Mortgage and
Housing Corporation was largely aimed at providing the condi-
tions under which a builder could apply his labor most efficiently
by building a group of houses in one planned operation. The
guarantee of sale provided by the Corporation also removed the
risks of marketing a group of houses all brought to completion at
about the same time in the same locality. It is too early yet to
appraise the economies which may be attributed to the “inte-
grated” scheme. .
In this approach to building economy there is a fundamental
dilemma concerning the scale of building organization. It is a —
matter of general belief that the small-scale speculative builder,
capable of producing from five to a dozen houses a year, can work
more economically than a large organization which must support
some high-salaried executives and maintain a down-town office
with a staff of draftsmen and stenographers. This is the contention
of the organized home-builders who have resisted the introduc-
tion of officially sponsored large-scale producers such as Wartime
Housing Limited and Housing Enterprises Limited. Though there
is no statistical evidence to support this claim of the small home-
builders (the overhead costs of Wartime Housing Limited have
never been published), yet it is probably true in so far as these
two Canadian large-scale housing organizations are concemed.
The fact is, however, that Wartime Housing Limited had to be
organized for administration on a national basis in order that an
emergency demand for housing could be fulfilled regardless of
cost. To some extent Housing Enterprises Limited must also be
Housing Costs 67
regarded as a public service organization which had to carry a
large administrative overhead simply in order to operate on a
national basis. It must be recognized that neither of these two
organizations was set up on a large scale for the specific purpose
of introducing new and more economical building procedures.
Obviously the size of the operating organization does not in itself
create economies and may well be the cause of administrative
expenses. But this fact and the experience of Wartime Housing
Limited should not be allowed to confuse the issue. It is beyond
dispute that there are certain economies in the building process
which could only be introduced by large-scale organizations
working on large-scale projects; such producers should be estab-
lished in the field in order that they may evolve new industrial-
ized methods of housing construction. Large-scale housing or-
ganizations which fail to improve on the production methods of
small-scale builders and simply add further administrative costs
thereto, certainly have no justification for their existence.
The prefabrication of wall panels, floorsections, stairs, kitchen
sets, and mechanical units must be done in quantity in order that
economies of factory production may become effective. But the
cost of transporting bulky prefabricated sections confines the
radius of distribution to a single metropolitan area. The market
for prefabricated building sections is not a national one but is of
only local proportions. It is therefore the more difficult to put
such prefabrication processes into operation with any kind of
economic security. In fact it is only when large-scale local projects
are planned that any significant degree of prefabrication can be
obtained. A local project must itself be large enough to support a
process of prefabrication. It is at this scale of operations that the
large producer first begins to overtake the costs of the small home-
builder; and this can only be achieved when shrewd engineering
and architectural design are brought into play.
No mention of the word “prefabrication” would be complete
without reference to the popular belief that any kind of stan-
dardization implies an objectionable uniformity in the design of
houses. This is one of those engaging myths of housing that has
68 HOUSES FoR CANADIANS
its counterpart in the allegation that families moved out of slums
into new housing habitually keep their coal in the bathtub. This
kind of objection to prefabrication and the design of large-scale
projects is certainly quite groundless. The Toronto urban area is
characterized by the extreme monotony and dullness of .the
houses that have been built by the small-scale home-builder;
there has been an endless repetition of the same types of house,
- their basic uniformity made all the more evident by the vain
attempts to give each dwelling ‘some individuality through the
application of some trivial surface ornament. The planning of
large-scale projects provides the opportunity to organize deliber-
ately some variations of design arising logically out of the orien-
tation, internal planning, and materials of individual units; such
variations may be introduced in such a way that the grouping
and colour of contrasting elements may have some dramatic effect.
It is certainly significant that in the Toronto area the only com- .
munities constructed since the war whose planning has departed
from the monotonous orthodoxy of real estate subdivision have
been the three projects developed by Wartime Housing Limited
and a few other private projects under unified architectural control.
What simple conclusions seem to emerge out of this brief re-
view of. the complexities and paradoxes within the residential
building industry? The following statements may receive general
acceptance and at least serve as a starting point for further
research: .
(1) No very significant changes in housing costs. can be ex-
pected to take place as long as the type of dwelling and type of
producer retain their present stereotyped form.
(2) Without changing the materials and forms of dwellings,
certain economies could be effected by large-scale producers
through a reduction in the number of handling operations in
moving materials from primary source to building site.
(3) If changes in the material and form of dwellings were
acceptable, large-scale producers could substitute off-site ma-
chine-tool processes for many operations now pertormed on the
site by hand.
Housing Costs ; 69
(4) Large-scale producers cannot enter the field unless there
are opportunities to develop projects large enough in scale to
justify new forms of operation and offset the overhead costs of
administration. l ;
(5) Large-scale producers cannot enter the field unless there
is the assured continuity of demand which would make it possible
to attract capital.
(6) Building projects carried out on a larger scale than is at
present customary would provide an opportunity for less stereo-
typed design and more imaginative planning; this in itself would
be likely to stimulate demand for housing.
Chapter Four: THE COMMUNITY’S CAPACITY
TO PAY FOR HOUSING
s
Any examination of the housing problem leads inevitably to the
conclusion that the community's capacity to pay for housing is
the limiting factor in the accomplishment of a programme. In
order to fill the housing needs of metropolitan Toronto the build-
ing industry must not only be equipped to build the required
number of units, but it must also be able to provide this quantity
of housing at a price that can be reached by the families in the
community—and this without departing from reasonable stan-
dards of quality. Unless the cost of owning or renting a new home
can be brought within the financial capacity of the majority of
the families in the area the entire programme may well collapse
and bring down with it many of the hopes for security and full
employment in the post-war years. The danger signal was heard
early in 1947 as housing production failed to fulfil its quota.
To the solution of this problem there are two approaches,
each of which must be pursued simultaneously. By structural
economies and by improved organization of the building industry .
the cost of housing itself must be reduced while, at the same time,
the purchasing capacity of families must be raised. Unfortunately
these two developments are perversely inclined to conflict with
one another. To increase family income by raising wages threatens
also to raise the cost of building. Conversely the lowering of
building costs, through reductions in wages and the introduction
of labour-saving methods of construction, might also reduce the
earnings of a large element of the population—unless the total
volume of building was thereby proportionately raised. The
dilemma is fundamental. The postulates are nicely contradictory.
70
f
The Community s Capacity to Pay for Housing 71
The effective economic demand for new housing is created
by those families who need housing and who have the money te
pay for it. The community’s capacity to obtain the necessary addi-
tions to its stock of housing is the sum of the capacities of indi-
vidual families. As a first step towards measuring the effective
demand it is therefore necessary to determine the numbers of
families at various income levels and to estimate how much
families of various sizes and incomes can afford to spend on hous-
ing. It must be confessed that neither of these two calculations
can be made with any real accuracy. To begin with, the decennial
census is the only occasion on which comprehensive records of
family income are obtained, and we are therefore compelled to
base our calculations on figures derived from the 1941 census.
Furthermore, the proportions of their incomes which families
spend on housing vary considerably under the pressure of cir-
cumstances, and it is therefore difficult to anticipate to what
lengths families may go in order to obtain accommodation which
they urgently need. The analysis which we are able to present
cannot therefore do more than depict in general terms the nature
of the economic problem with which the community is faced.
DisTRIBUTION OF INCOME
At the time of the 1941 census there were about 204,000 house-
holds in the Toronto metropolitan area. (See Table XIU.) A
large proportion of these households, nearly half of them, had
incomes between $1,000 and $2,000. About 30. per cent of all the
households had incomes of more than $2,000 and about 12 per
cent had incomes of less than $1,000. Since discussions of housing
always involve reference to “upper,” “middle,” and “low” incomes
it is convenient also to divide families into these groups.* If the
‘1In the literature of housing these terms have been used with various shades
of meaning; since they inevitably occur with considerable frequency in any: dis-
cussions of housing it would be valuable to possess simple and universal definitions
of the terms “low-income family” and “high-income family.” In the United States
Housing Act 1937 families of low-income are defined as those who “cannot afford
to pay enough to cause private enterprise in their locality or metropolitan area to
build an adequate supply of decent, safe and sanitary’ dwellings for their use.”
72, CREE 0 FE ai . ‘Housks FoR CANADIANS.
families in the Toronto area are marked in the order of income
received and then divided.into three numerically equal groups,
it is found that the upper-income group contains all those with
incomes of more than $2,000, the middle-income group all with
incomes between $1,200 and $2,000, and the low-income group
` those with incomes of less than $1,200. The average income of
the middle group was $1,549 and of the low-income group $826.
These figures refer only to the Toronto metropolitan area where
incomes are above the average; for each metropolitan. area in
‘Canada there is a different and characteristic distribution of
incomes giving somewhat different lines of demarcation between
the upper-, middle-, and low-income groups. In Windsor, Ontario,
‘for instance, where there is.a more homogeneous type of employ-
ment, the middle third was concentrated in 1941 between $1,400
and $1,900, while in Saint John and Quebec City the middle third
lay het woot $1,000 and $1,500.
In discussing incomes in relation to housing it is necessary to
assess the total incomes of households, and not only the incomes
of the heads of households. Though contributions to the family
income made by members of the household other than the prin-
This attempt to describe the expression in terms of housing supply, the very
quantity which is unknown, leaves us about where we started. An even more cir-
cumambient definition is that;found in Canada’s National Housing Act 1944 where
a “family. of low income” is defined as one which “receives a total family income
less than five times the economic rental of a family housing unit required to pro-
vide sufficient accommodation for the said family.” This is an equally elusive
definition and must be criticized on account of its arbitrary acceptance of the
generalization that one-fifth of income is a reasonable proportion to be devoted
torent. ` i
The Curtis Committee, in its 1944- Report, neatly avoided these term-
inological pitfalls by simply ranking all families in any given area in the order
of income received, and then dividing them into three numerically equal sections,
the upper-, middle-, and lower-income groups. By this procedure the term “family
of Tow income” has a simple meaning that does not have to be explained by refer-
ence to some quite unknown facts about housing. By making a separate cal-
culation for each metropolitan area the Committee took account of the realistic
consideration, important for all housing appraisals, that income and rental patterns
vary in different parts of the country. Where the terms “upper-,” “middle-,” and
“low-” income groups occur in this study they are used in the same sense in which
they were employed in the Curtis Report.
The Community's Capacity to Pay for Housing 73
cipal breadwinner may not be very substantial, yet they cannot
be disregarded. On the other hand, income figures used in hous-
ing surveys. and calculations should be based on biological
families without lodgers or sub-tenants and without sons and
daughters of adult age. For the periods of housing shortage and
in areas of low-income and substandard housing it is commonly
necessary for a family to shelter additional persons and gain addi-
tional contributors to the rent, The inclusion of such contributors
may create a somewhat false impression of the real capacity of
the family to pay for a self-contained dwelling unit. The income
figures employed in this study are based on all those families
covered by the 1941 Household Census (a 10 per cent sample)
which contained only members of one biological family without
lodgers and without sons and daughters over the age of 24.
Within these families it we found that the contributions of those
other than the head of the household represented an average 5.3
per cent of the total family income.
For comparison with the 1941 family income figures on which
this study has been based there is given in Table XIV the per-
centage distribution of individual income-tax payers as it has been
estimated for Ontario in 1946 by the Department of National
Revenue. It is seen that 60 per cent of these individual taxpayers
have incomes of less than $3,000 and 40 per cent have less than
$2,000. No current figures are available to show the incomes of
households in the Toronto area.
PROPORTION OF INCOME ACTUALLY SPENT ON HOUSING
According to a commonly accepted rule-of-thumb a family can
afford to pay one-fifth (20 per cent) of its income for housing
accommodation, whether this be in the form of rent or periodic
payments for the ownership and maintenance of a house. This
standard may be applied to the Table of Income Distribution
(Table XIV) to provide a Table of Rent Capacity (Table XV).
It is seen that about 16 per cent of the families in the area could
be expected to pay more than $50 a month for housing (those
with incomes of more than $3,000), about 46 per cent could pay
74 Hovses For CANADIANS
between $25 and $50, while about 30 per cent could not pay
more than $25 a month.
When the rule-of-thumb is applied to the three main income
groups it is found that the average middle-income family could
pay a rent of about $26 and the average low-income family about
` $14. In view of these theoretical levels of rent capacity it is rather
surprising to find that in 1941 (the year on which our income
figures are based) the official index of rents in the Toronto area,
as published by the Department of Labour, shows that “six-
roomed houses with modern conveniences” were renting for $28
to $40 and “six-roomed houses with incomplete modern con-
veniences” were renting for $20 to $28.” At the end of 1947 rents
in Toronto were officially listed as $34 to $38. If it is indeed true
that the normal rents being charged for family housing units are
theoretically so far beyond the reach of the average middle-
income family and that a low-income family is theoretically quite
incapable of meeting the rent even on a house “with incomplete
modern conveniences,” then either the theory needs some further
examination or the housing situation is a good deal worse than
has commonly been supposed.
The belief that families can and usually do spend about one-`
fifth of their income on housing accommodation was supported
by the evidence of a Canadian study of family budgets made in
1937-38,* From this it appeared that “families living in rented
dwellings spent 20 per cent of total living expenditure for shelter.
Those residing in their own houses paid out a slightly lower pro-
portion of 19.3 per cent.” From the sample group of 1,185 British-
Canadian families on which the study was based it also appeared
that the proportions of income spent on housing were almost
uniform throughout all income levels in the case of tenants, but
owners at lower income levels paid considerably less than 20 per
cent.
But the evidence supplied by the Curtis Report in 1944 oY
diaboir Gazette, July, 1941, p. 865.
3Dominion Bureau of Statistics, Family Income and Expenditure in Canada `
1987-1938. (Ottawa, 1941).
The Community's Capacity to Pay for Housing 75
no means supported this belief. The far larger sample of the
. population covered by the 1941 census showed that low-income
families in all urban areas had to pay a rent far beyond their
theoretical capacity and even middle-income families paid con-
siderably more than a fifth of their income. Furthermore it ap-
peared that rent levels in the Toronto area were particularly high
in relation to income. Low-income families, instead of paying the
average $14 which was their theoretical capacity, were in fact ->
paying almost twice that amount, an average of $25; this was $5
more than was being paid by low-income families in Ottawa,
Hamilton, London, and Windsor. Middle-income families in the
Toronto area were paying only $3 more than their theoretical
capacity of $26; here the discrepancy between theory and practice
was only slightly more marked in Toronto than in other metro-
politan areas. In Montreal and Windsor middle-income families
were in 1941 actually paying less than their theoretical capacity.
(See Tables XVI and XVII.)
.. There is an unmistakable relationship between income levels
and the proportions of income paid for rent. Toronto families with
incomes between $1,500 and $2,000 have been paying, on the
average, 21 per cent of their income for rent. Those with incomes
between $1,000 and $1,500 have paid about 25 per cent and those
with less than $1,000 a year have averaged about 40 per cent of
their incomes in rent payments. It must be concluded that the
rule-of-thumb concerning rent capacity has arisen from a general-
ization that over-simplifies the facts. It may be true that the
statistical average of all rents paid by families of all incomes does
represent about one-fifth of the statistical average of all incomes.
' But this may well occur if the excessive rents paid by low-income
families are balanced by the relatively easier rents paid by high-
income families. ©
A fundamental cause of variations in the relationship between
incomes and rents is the size of the family. A childless married
couple obviously does not have to spend such a large proportion
of its budget on food and clothes as the parents of four growing
children must spend; they can consequently afford to spend con-
76 i . l -HOUSES FOR CANADIANS
siderably more on their housing accommodation. To a lesser de-
gree the parents of a six-year-old only child have more rent money
available than the parents of two ‘teen-age children, though the
family incomes may be identical. Unfortunately it is the families
with more children which need more housing accommodation;
to obtain more rooms for the same amount of money a family
must be prepared to accept a lower standard of housing—fewer
modern conveniences, smaller rooms, and a less desirable neigh-
bourhood. With the need to keep a growing family fed and
clothed at current costs of living it is usually necessary for housing
standards to be relaxed. So a continual demand is maintained for
the city’s obsolescent stock of housing in spite of its lack of mod-
ern conveniences and neighbourhood amenities.
The relationship between family size and rents is demon-
strated in Table XVII, showing the rents paid by different types of
family at three different income levels. It reveals that the costs
of raising children do, in fact, have a marked effect upon rent
capacity. Childless families have paid four or five dollars more for
rent each month than families with two children, while families
with two children paid two or three dollars more than those with
four children. It should be pointed out that since larger families
require more housing space their rental funds have to be stretched
further. The fact that larger families have paid less rent is there-
fore only a partial indication of the lower standards of housing
which child-raising necessitates. Families with more children not
only paid less rent but with that rent they needed to buy more
housing accommodation.
It was, of course, the recognition of these very familiar truths
that led to the introduction of “family allowances” in Canada.
These payments to some extent compensate parents for the fact
that in our economic system the reward which a man receives for
his labour bears no relation to his family expenses or to the con-
tribution he and his wife make to the state by raising a family.
Family allowances have done a great deal to reconcile the facts
of competitive economy with the equally real facts of household
economy. The figures in Table XVIII are derived from the census
The Community's Capacity to Pay for Housing 77
of 1941, the year previous to the introduction of family allow-
ances; no record yet exists of the effect which these payments _
have had upon the relationship between family size and rents `
paid. It may be assumed that a family allowance is a contribution
to the total family income, to be distributed pro rata amongst the
items on the budget; on this basis one-fifth of a family allowance
would be a contribution towards rent. The average allowance is
$6.00 per child per month, of which $1.20 may be regarded as
available for rent. It can be seen that family allowance payments
do not, therefore, offset the recorded differences of rent actually
paid by larger families.
In Table XVIII figures are shown for rents paid in the whole
metropolitan area and also for the city of Toronto itself and the
suburban municipalities or “fringe” area. From this it appears
that housing accommodation within the city itself was consider-
ably more expensive than in the suburbs. Families of the same
size and income have to pay four or five dollars more each month
to live within the city. However, if the family wage earner living
within the city could walk to his place of employment and so save
costs of transportation this differential would be about offset.
(Sixty-four rides on a Toronto street car cost $4.00.) But this cer-
tainly does not place suburban and city districts at parity because
there are comparatively limited areas within the city from which
it is possible to walk to a place of employment; also, from the
family point of view, the suburban areas offer far more attractive
environment in which to raise children.
RENTS AND THE FAMILY BUDGET
Amongst upper-income families, where there can be consider-
able flexibility in the budget, it is entirely a matter of choice and
convention how much is spent on housing. The fact that such
families customarily spend about the same proportions of their
incomes on housing can only be attributed to the conventional
attitudes of people and their tendency to conform with the mores
of the society in which they live. In order to become identified
with a community it becomes necessary to accept its standards
78 Houses ror CANADIANS
of normal behaviour. One must dress in a certain way and be able
to produce certain evidences of the social status to which a family
aspires. It may even be regarded by some as necessary to possess
a certain quality of car, certain kinds of household furniture, and
some liquor. By allocating its available resources. in certain pro-
portions amongst the competing demands upon the budget it is
possible for a family to approximate most closely to the normal
standards of the society in which it is placed. The upper-income
families which habitually spend about one-fifth of their incomes
on housing do not do so on account of economic necessity but
on account of social conventions which place a restraint upon the
potential flexibility of their budgets. It should be recognized that
_ it is only the acceptance of such conventions which prevents a
comparatively well-to-do family from spending an unusually large
proportion of its income on buying, for instance, fine paintings,
or a valuable grand piano, or a sailing boat, or an abnormally ex-
pensive professional education for the children. There are indeed
many objectives in life more to be applauded than conformity
with accepted. conventions.
But the smaller the family’s income the less flexibility can
there be in the proportions spent on food, clothing, and shelter.
At the lower levels of income the household commodities pur-
- chased approximate more-and more.closely to the bare necessities
of living, and finally reach an irreducible minimum if life is to be
maintained at an adequate level of health and decency. When
low-income families have to make an excessive expenditure on
housing, to such an extent that the remaining funds are insuffi-
cient to maintain a family’s standards of health, then i becomes
a matter of public concern.
Let us suppose; for instance, that at current- costs of house-
hold commodities a family of twò adults and two ċhildren requires
$100 a month to maintain an adequate standard of living, exclu-
sive of rent. This standard could be maintained if the family had
an income of $125 a month ($1,500 a year) and paid not more
than a fifth of its income ($25 a month )-for rent. But if the family
had to pay $35 a month for rent it would be $10 short on its
The Community's Capacity to Pay for Housing 79
monthly household budget. The situation would, however, be
much more critical if the family’s income dropped to $100 a
month, for at that level it would not even be possible to pay the
theoretical one-fifth of income ($20 a month) and at the same
time meet the required living standard at $80 a month. It is evi-
dent, in fact, that there is a critical income level below which the
familiar rule-of-thumb must be applied with considerable dis-
cretion. This critical margin is at a different level for families of
different sizes and rests upon the recognition of a “standard” of
living. Is there any such recognized standard against which it is
possible to measure deficiencies and requirements? What sig-
nificance can be attached to such arbitrary standards in planning
the solution to Canada’s housing problems?
The definition of a standard of decency and health is no easy
matter because at every income level people will habitually
declare that they could not possibly get along with less. While
the possession of an additional slice of bread might be regarded
as relative affluence by a starving European, yet a Canadian may
feel that he is suffering some deprivation if he cannot purchase an
` additional bottle of rye whiskey. Standards of judgment change
with the fluctuations of culture and the circumstances of the time |
and environment. Some may even doubt whether our kind of
civilization has really raised living standards. Is it possible that
the peasant family, breathing clean air and eating the fresh fruits
of the land, had a richer life than the. crowded inhabitants of the
present industrial city? The process of urbanization cannot be
justified unless we provide the industrial wage-earner with greatly
improved housing and restore to his family the enjoyment of
open spaces and access to the pleasures of the rural landscape.
Before the war the League of Nations made some attempt to
define minimum’ standards of civilized living, particularly with
reference to nutrition. The United Nations Organization is mak-
ing similar attempts. While in the present unstable condition of
the world it may not yet be possible to recognize standards com-
mon to many different races and environments, yet within our own
more or less homogeneous ‘society we are free to define our own
80 l z -. Houses FoR CANADIANS
minimum standard of living and can compute its cost. Canada has,
in fact, gone a long way in this direction. All our measures of
social security, all the striving to raise wage-rates and maintain a
balance with the costs of living, all the health and welfare services
of a community, all these efforts are inspired by a tacit belief that
there is a decent manner of living to which our neighbours and
fellow-citizens should be able to conform. We are moving towards
the definition of a standard. It is not the bare minimum on which
human life can be sustained and work performed, a standard
measured in minimum calories and minimum shelter. It is a
standard on which a family may live with the dignity appropriate
to citizens of a thriving country.
In 1938 the Welfare Council of Toronto undertook a detailed
study of the cost of living in the city in order to provide “some
standard by which to measure the adequacy of income and to
analyse the way in which it is being spent.” A report was pub-
lished in 1939; a revised edition appeared in 1944 taking account
of the price changes that had occured in the intervening years,
and amendments have been published for May, 1947 (Table
XX). This important document has received national recognition
and may be regarded as this community's attempt to determine
a standard of living. It is not too liberal a standard. The sums
allocated to food expenses necessitate expert housewife manage-
’ ment. The allowance for medical and dental care is admitted to
be inadequate, no provision has been made for maintenance in
old age, and the savings allowed are modest in relation to the
unforeseeable needs of family emergencies. The provision referred
to as “Advancement and Recreation” permits of only a narrow
range of interests. And finally, a somewhat serious limitation, the
budget assumes that the household is already a going concern in
possession of a stock of furniture and household equipment; for
newly married couples who are starting to keep house the present
cost of acquiring those essential simple possessions is a familiar
and heavy item on the budget.
The cost of maintaining the standard of living established by
the Toronto Welfare Council is shown, in its simplest form, in
The Community's Capacity to Pay for Housing 81
Table G. Approximate figures are shown for families of various
sizes with adjustments made for the price changes between 1941
and May, 1947.
TABLE G
MontuLy Cost or MAINTAINING STANDARD oF Livinc SET By TORONTO
’ WELFARE Counci (Exciupinc Rent)
Family Size 1941 1944 1947
2 adults only $ 61 $ 67 $ 74
“< and 1 child 80. 87 97
“and 2 children 96 105 117
“and 8 children : 118 , 124 139
“and 4 children 181 144 161
“and 5 children 148 162 183
These figures, however, are merely generalizations since the
cost of supporting actual individuals varies with their sex and
age, and therefore families of the same size may have widely
varying minimum costs. Age variations cause much wider cost
differences than sex. The cost of living for persons of either sex
increases with age until maturity and remains substantially the
same through the prime of life, declining ultimately with the rela-
tive inactivity of old age. Sex introduces a quite minor variation.
Boys, as a rule, eat more than girls, and wear out more clothing
in their younger years, although after the age of seventeen a girl’s
clothing requirements are more expensive than a boy's. Similar
variations apply to. adults. A working man occasions more expense
than his wife on food and clothing. He must also save more, since
a proper minimum budget should permit the breadwinner of a
family to carry life insurance.
Although the sex of children may not have a very substantial
influence on family expenses yet the age composition of the family
may vary costs considerably, to such an extent that a family hav-
ing a number of children in the lower age group is actually less
expensive to maintain than a smaller family with older children.
For instance, three children aged two, four and seven can be
maintained at less cost per month than two children aged fifteen
and seventeen.'This may be rather an illusion, however, for in
82 Houses For CANADIANS
ten years’ time the larger family will have greatly increased ex-
penses, whereas ten years earlier the smaller family enjoyed the
cheaper costs of children in the lower age groups. When the
family living costs are viewed over a long period of time, as they
must be in any calculation of living costs, the factor of age com-
position loses its importance as an influence on total expenses.
It affects the distribution of costs in time but not their total
amount. In the long run family size exerts an effect on total family
expenses that is not influenced by the age distribution of a family.
It is appropriate therefore to think of family size as the principal
determinant of family living costs, and to think of all families of
a given size as having the same age distribution. This procedure
at least simplifies the analysis and focuses attention on the more
important considerations.
TABLE H
ANNUAL INCOMES REQUIRED To SUPPORT FAMILIES AT TORONTO WELFARE
COUNCIL’S STANDARD or LIVING
A B C D
: Income
Proportionate Required
Annual Costs Rent Total Annual (Without
Family Size of Living _ (One-quarter Expenses Family
(Less Rent) of A) (A plus B) Allowances)
2 adults only $ 888 $222, $1,110 $1,110
, l child 1,164 291 . 1,455 1,381
“2 children 1,404 351 1,755 1,606
“3 children 1,668 417 2,085 1,862
“< , 4 children 1,932 483 2,415 2,141
“ "5 children 2,196 549 2,745 2,430
On the basis of the family budgets shown in Table G we are
able to formulate a statement of the annual incomes that are re-
quired by families of various sizes in order that they may. be
enabled to live at the desirable Toronto standard without paying
more than one-fifth of their incomes for rent. Since family allow-
ances represent a substantial supplement to incomes a distinction
has been made in Table H between the total expenses that must
be met and the actual income required to meet those expenses.
The Community's Capacity to Pay for Housing 83
A family with two children, for instance, would have annual ex-
penses of $1,755 to maintain the standard but, in view of the
receipt of family allowances, would require an earned income of
only $1,606. With four children the cost of maintaining the
standard and paying proportionate rent would be $2,415 and the
earned income necessary would be only $2,141. From this it is
evident that the introduction of family allowances has brought
within reach of the Toronto standard a very large number of
families who would otherwise have had to reduce their budgets
either for housing or for other household necessities.
In order to give an accurate statement of the earned income `
required to maintain the Toronto standard of living it is necessary
to make a still further adjustment for income tax. Gross incomes
are subject to a tax which varies with the level of income and with
the size of the family. When incomes are transformed by income
taxes and by family allowances they yield the figures shown in
Table XXI. This table represents successive levels of earned or
gross income and the actual incomes received by families of
various sizes when the necessary adjustments for family allow-
ances and income tax have been made. It is on these adjusted
income figures that budgets and rent capacities must be based.
At lower income levels, where income tax is not effective,
family allowances increase earned incomes by the full extent of
these payments. At upper income levels, where family allowance
payments are negatived by income tax, the available income is,
of course, less than earned income. But in between these two are
the middle income families which both receive an increment from
family allowances and are also subject to income tax deductions;
for each family size there is an income level at which those two
adjustments cancel one another out and leave earned incomes
just as they are, unaffected by either family allowances or income
tax. Families above this line have spending incomes less than -
earned incomes, while families below this line have more funds
. available than were earned. In Table XXI this line of demarcation
is indicated by the broken stepped-line. l
Considerably lower than this line of demarcation is the mini-
84 Houses ror CANADIANS
mum level of adjusted incomes at which families of various sizes
are able: to support Toronto's basic standard of living and also
pay 20 per cent of their income for rent as this has been shown in
Tables G and H (and in greater detail in Table XX for.a family of
_ two adults and three children ). This is a datum line of considerable
significance in our study of family capacity to pay for housing. It
is a broad delineation of that margin below which housing costs
become dangerously excessive. For it is argued that families which
fall below the standard line are placed in an untenable position;
if they have to pay a fifth of their income for rent they cannot at
the same time live up to the standards of health and home man-
agement which the people of this community expect. The struggle
to maintain these standards must inevitably set up stresses on
family health and behaviour. It is largely these physical and
psychological stresses which give rise to the high incidence of ill-
health and delinquency in low-income housing areas; it is the
nature of the family’s economic situation as much as the poor
quality of the housing itself which produces those maladies so
expensive to the community.
If it should be regarded as the ultimate goal of this community
to enable all its families to achieve the standard of living that has
been defined by the Toronto Welfare Council, then it would be
necessary to revise the generally accepted belief that even the
lowest income families can afford to pay one-fifth of income for
rent. There is a critical level above which families can afford to
pay one-fifth of income for rent and also maintain a desirable `
standard of living. It may well be argued that the true rent
capacity of families below this level is not one-fifth of income,
but only what remains after the costs of maintaining the desir-
able standard of living have been met.
This critical level has been broadly defined in Table XXII.
This table gives the same distribution of incomes and family sizes
that is shown in Table XXI, but net incomes have here been con-
verted into rent capacity (one-fifth of the figures for net income).
The critical level is shown by the heavy stepped-line. Below this
standard-of-living datum line figures are shown in brackets; these
The Co...unity’s Capacity to Pay for Housing > 8
are in each case the balance remaining after the standard costs of
living have been paid. A family with three children, for instance,
and an earned income of $1,800 would have to pay a monthly
rent of $33 in order to conform with the one-fifth-of-income
formula; but if this family lived up to the desirable Toronto
_ standard it would only have $25 a month remaining for the pay-
ment of rent. With the addition of another child to the family
the theoretical rent capacity would increase to about $34 on
account of family allowances received; but if this family con-
tinued to conform with the living standard its ability to pay rent
would really be reduced to about $10 a month.
Apart from those families whose incomes and size definitely
place them below the margin of the standard line, it must be
recognized that any near approach to this line may place a family
in precarious circumstances. For the Toronto standard is not one
that establishes a generous or ample life but one which requires
considerable perseverance and conscientious management on the
part of the housewife. Any serious hiatus in earnings or any un-
foreseen call upon family finances would entirely upset the bud-
get. Take the case, for instance, of a family earning the average
industrial wage in the Toronto area ($34 a week, January, 1947)
giving an annual income of $1,768. On the birth of their first child
the parents might well feel that they were able to buy a small
house and might undertake to pay off a mortgage at the rate of
$28 a month which would be well within their capacity. On the
birth of a second child this cost would still be manageable but a
third child would be a rash undertaking; it would place the family
well below the margin of safety and wipe out any reserves there
might be against’ periods of sickness and unemployment. This
illustrates the danger of a housing policy which encourages home-
ownership amongst families whose incomes are just theoretically _
adequate to carry the monthly instalments on a mortgage.
We have attempted here to appraise the real validity of the
commonly accepted formula for rent capacity. This formula was
never, of course, more than a convenient generalization and we
have seen that the lower income families have habitually had to
86 l Houses FoR CANADIANS
pay much more rent than the formula prescribed. It may be said
that the standard of living defined by the Toronto Welfare Coun-
cil is an equally arbitrary formula which could not possibly be
used as a precise basis for determining rent capacity. It must be
confessed that the attempt to reduce family needs to a classified
budget is a denial of the manifold varieties of human nature.
While the desire for security persuades us to accept the conven-
tional standards of our community, the equally vigorous urge for
freedom of individual expression makes us all resist such uni-
formities. The idiosyncrasies, vanities, pleasures, and generosities
that make life worth living cannot be accounted for in scientific
budgets and economic formulae, But even this cold examination
of minimum family needs has shown the many variable factors
that must enter into household plans; it is clear that simple gen-
eralizations and rules-of-thumb for calculating a family’s capacity
to pay for housing may be quite misleading. We may at least
accept the general proposition that a family should not have to
pay so much for shelter that the basic standard of living is threat-
ened, Those who most proudly advertise the economic accom-
plishments of Canada must admit that we are yet a long way
from having removed that threat.
Tue SOCIAL AND Economic FRAMEWORK OF A Housing
PROGRAMME
In planning a housing programme it is necessary to define the
principal characteristics of the population for which housing must
be supplied. One type of community may be characterized by its
wide variations of income, while in another the great majority of
the people may fall within a comparatively small income range.
Or the community may be typified by the concentration of large
families at low incomes. Obviously such characteristics have a
significant bearing upon the types of houses that must be de-
signed and the ability of the community to maintain an adequate
` supply. An examination of the income and family size structure
of metropolitan Toronto's population is an essential introduction
to the conception of a housing programme for Toronto. Tables
The Community s Capacity to Pay for Housing 87
XXHI and XXIV depict the income levels and family sizes into
which the population of metropolitan Toronto was distributed
in 1941. In Table XXII these are expressed as percentages of the
total metropolitan family population while Table XXIV gives a
numerical distribution of families. For this purpose it has been
assumed that the post-war population of metropolitan Toronto
contains about 200,000 families as distinct from persons not living
in family groups. In 1941 there were 563,000 persons over the age
of twenty-five (in the Toronto metropolitan area) and 419,000
married persons. It may therefore be assumed that there were
about 144,000 single persons over the age of twenty-five. To this
number may be added a considerable proportion of the 80,000
persons between the ages of twenty and twenty-five who were
not married but who no longer lived in their parents’ homes.
There would thus be approximately 200,000 single persons in the
area living as lodgers or as tenants of apartments, duplexes, etc.
The 200,000 families in the area represent a population of about
750,000 (at an average of 3.76 persons per family). The popula-
tion in families and the population of single persons together
make up the metropolitan population of about 950,000.
In Tables XXII and XXIV it may be seen that the largest
concentration is that of the one-child families with incomes
. between $1,000 and $1,500—nearly 14,000 families or 6.8 per cent
of all the families in the area. One may achieve a certain sense
of proportion by observing that less than a tenth of this number
is found in the group of one-child families with incomes between
$4,000 and $5,000.
The distribution shown in Tables XXIII and XXIV may be
regarded as the type of basic social-economic framework on
which a comprehensive housing programme for the Toronto area
must be constructed. The figures do not include, however, about
200,000 single persons who do not form parts of family groups
but who must be taken into account in order to complete the
description of the metropolitan society for which the housing pro-
gramme must be designed. Since these distribution tables are
derived from the 1941 census they cannot be used with any
88 Hovusrs ror CANADIANS
validity in combination with 1947 costs of living and costs of
housing. For instance the application to Table XXIII of the
standard of living datum line (developed in the previous section
of this chapter) would suggest that about 40 per cent of all the
families in the Toronto area fall below this line. But the general
level of incomes has risen since 1941 to such an extent that prob-
ably not more than 80 per cent of all families are below this
datum line. If a datum line is established on the basis of 1941
costs of living (shown in Table G above for families of different
sizes) and applied to Table XXITI, it is found that in 1941 more
than 25 per cent of all families in the Toronto area were abso-
lutely below the standard line. It may be assumed that this pro-
portion remains about constant since it arises from the relation-
ship between incomes and costs of living. It may therefore be said
that between 25 and 30 per cent of the families in the area are
not able to pay one-fifth of income for rent without jeopardizing
their standard of living.
The lack of economic and social data applicable to 1947 con-
ditions suggests that there is an urgent need for a large sample
survey which would make it possible to construct social-economic
tables similar in form to Tables XXIII and XXIV. Without such
contemporary evidence it is impossible to measure the real limits
of the community's housing problems. Unless the community's:
present capacity to pay for housing is known with some degree
of accuracy it is extremely difficult to plan a programme which
would accomplish the desired results,
With the limited knowledge at our disposal it is possible to
make’ certain broad generalizations about the framework of a
housing programme for the Toronto area. For this purpose the
population may be divided into five principal groups:
(a) Families who have at least one child and whose incomes
enable them to buy the kind of house they need.
(b) Families who have at least one child but whose incomes
do not enable them to buy a house though they are able to pay
one-fifth of their income as rent. l
(c) Families who have at least one child and whose incomes
The Community's Capacity to Pay for Housing 89
and family size prevent them from paying a proportionate rent
and also maintaining a desirable standard of living.
(d) Married couples without children.
(e) Single persons not living in family groups.
(a) Families able to buy new houses. As a basis for cal-
culating the number of families who can afford to buy a new.
house let us assume the minimum cost of a dwelling to be $6,000
and let us assume the ability of families to make cash payments
of $2,000; the cost of the principal and interest on a National
Housing Act loan together with the payment of taxes:on such a
house would then amount to about $34 a month. Group (a) there-
. fore contains all those families with children who are able to
make monthly payments of at least $34. A study of Tables XXII,
XXI, and XXIV indicates that about 33 per cent of all the
families in the Toronto area, or about 66,000 families, may be in
such an economic position. This might be regarded as an under-
estimate in view of the general rise in incomes between 1941 and
1947; but this may well be offset both by the limited number of
families who have been able to retain savings of $2,000 during a
period of high living costs and by the difficulty of obtaining a
new house for $6,000. The estimate cannot therefore be very far
from the truth.
It is upon the economic demand of this group of families that
the community depends for the supply of new: single-family
homes built for owner-occupation. It must be recognized that a
large number of these families, perhaps the majority, are already
quite adequately housed, and only the remainder offer the effec-
tive demand for new houses. Even if a third of all these families,
about 20,000, were to buy new houses during the next ten. years
it can be seen that this supply would not go very far towards
supplying the estimated need for 50,000 additional units.
(b) Families able to pay proportionate rent but not able to
buy new houses. With a lower rent-capacity than group (a) are
those families which can afford to pay one-fifth of income for
housing, but which are unable to contemplate the purchase of a
new house. Since families in this group are able to pay an eco-
90 Houses ror CANADIANS
nomic rent, they are in line to occupy the used housing handed
down to them from group (a). At present when comparatively
few houses are being built for group (a), only a very small num-
ber of houses can become available to group (b). In the Toronto
area about 15 per cent of all families (about 30,000 families)
are in this category.
(c) Families unable to pay proportionate rent and maintain
a desirable standard of living. Of all the families with children
we are then left with those who fall below the standard line which
has been established. Upon these families fall the greatest house-
hold problems in their attempt to raise children under suitable
conditions. This group contains all the families with
1 child, an income below $1,400, a rent capacity less than $25
2 children, an income below $1,700, a rent capacity less than $30
3 children, an income below $2,000, a rent capacity less than $36
4 children, an income below $2,300, a rent capacity less than $40.
This group may represent about 30 per cent of all the families in
the area and may embrace about 60,000 families. These families
cannot occupy new accommodation either by ownership or rental
and are dependent upon the existing stock of housing supplied by
. previous generations of house purchasers and handed down for
their use. In a period of housing shortage this is the group most
tightly pressed because there is not enough housing to be handed
down for their use and the rents of the available stock are main-
tained at a level beyond their real capacity.
‘(d) Married couples without children. About 22 per cent of
the families in the area are married couples who either have not
yet started to raise a family or whose children have already grown
up and left the home. These childless families (about 40,000 in
number) are normally tenants in apartment houses or duplexes.
Their needs do not stimulate the production of new houses for
_ owner-occupation; they are dependent upon the supply of rental
housing. Although their housing requirements are not so im-
mediately pressing or so inflexible as those of families with chil-
dren, yet appropriate accommodation must be provided..in: the
neighbourhood. communities of which they form an integral part.
The Community's Capacity to Pay for Housing 91
(e) Single persons not living in family groups. In addition to
the families with and without children there are about 200,000
individual persons in the area who have to be housed either as
lodgers or in non-family household groups renting apartments or
duplexes. Like the married couples without children they do not
help to stimulate the production of houses for owner-occupation.
As lodgers some help to supplement the rents ‘of families and
some keep professional lodging-house operators in business; the
more effective earners are able to occupy apartments. This is a
fluid element in the rental population, inclined to move frequently
under changing income circumstances and on account of im-
permanent social attachments. In periods of full employment, as
- during the war, the economic demand of this group placed addi-
tional pressure on limited housing accommodation; in periods of
recession this is the most vulnerable part of the population and
the withdrawal of its effective demand causes vacancies in rental
housing.
Chapter Five: HOUSING SUPPLY
AND ORGANIZATION
Teas study began in Chapter 1 with an attempt to define the broad
objectives of a national housing programme. It was assumed that
the ultimate aim of housing policy was to provide a decent
separate dwelling unit for each Canadian household. The eco-
nomic circumstances under which this task would have to be .
accomplished were then discussed in Chapters n, nr, and rv, using
the Toronto metropolitan area as an example, and as a source of
statistical material. Calculations were made to show the number
of replacements and additional housing units required in the area;
the costs of producing housing were related with the financial
capacity of the families for whom housing must be supplied. The
resultant problem faces us: “How is the community's need for
housing to be satisfied?”
THEORY OF THE Housinc MARKET
The amount of new housing which a community obtains is
normally governed by the forces of supply and demand which
create the “housing market.” Although this economic process is
similar to that which governs the price and output of other goods
and services, yet the housing market is subject to such a multitude
of conflicting and variable influences that it is not at all easy to
define its operations in simple terms or provide a facile explana-
tion of what is happening or what may cause a failure of supply.
This difficulty arises largely because money spent on housing is
really divided between two separate but closely related markets,
that for old and that for new housing.
Whenever the costs of new housing increase, money is with-
held from that market and flows back into the market for old
housing, raising the prices and rents of old houses. Conversely
92
Housing Supply and Organization | 93.
when the costs of producing new houses decrease, then money
flows back into that market and the. rents of old houses tend to
decrease accordingly. Or expressed in another way, it may be
said that whenever the amount of money spent on living in old
houses is, on the average, high in relation to the cost of construct-
_ing a new dwelling, then the supply of new houses will respond
and, as the total number of units increases, rents will gradually
decline until a kind of equilibrium is established. It is a recog-
nition of this economic principle that, in our present housing
shortage, has led some people to advocate that controls on rents
should be removed so that demand would shift from the old-
housing market into the market for new housing and so the build-
ing of houses would be accelerated. (To bring this about without
a general raising of income levels would imply, of course, that
families would have to pay a larger proportion of their incomes
for housing and would consequently have less to spend on other
household needs.) In such a free situation an equilibrium would
be established when rents had levelled off with the prices of new
housing. For it should be realized, of course, that the kind of
equilibrium which arises through such a free interplay of the two
housing markets, the old and the new, is an entirely economic
‘ equilibrium, tending to balance off the price of old housing with
the price of new housing. It is not an equilibrium established
between the numbers of dwelling units and the numbers of
families or households. Ifthe cost of constructing new housing is
very high and beyond the reach of all but a small proportion of
the community, then production might be cut off long before a
- shortage had been overcome, leaving rents balanced off at an
equally high level. For in this relationship between the prices of
old and new housing, it is the price (or rents) of old housing
which is the variable or flexible element, while the price of new
housing is a relatively fixed quantity based on the costs of labour
and materials.
The operations of the housing market may also be described
in a somewhat different way. The residential construction indus-
try, responding to the demand of those who can afford to live in
94 HOUSES FOR CANADIANS
new houses, has had to devote itself almost exclusively to filling
the requirements of the comparatively well-to-do families. As
these families have moved into new houses in new neighbour-
hoods they have sold or rented their old houses for the occupation
of those in lower income levels. There has thus been a continuous
flow of new housing into the possession of the upper third and a
continuous recession of older dwellings down the social scale.
This has been called the “filtering-down” process. It is argued that
the normal and most economical way of housing low-income
families will always be through the construction of new housing
‘for those who can afford it, on the assumption that they will
vacate equivalent accommodation which can then be occupied by
families with smaller incomes. In practice this procedure has not
always worked satisfactorily because the rental values of old
houses have not been consistently and proportionately reduced
in the process of filtering down, with the result that low-income
families, as we have shown in a previous chapter, have habitually
had to pay more than they could afford for their accommodation.
In a larger sense it may be said that the filtering-down process has
demonstrably not proved satisfactory; the flow of houses down
the scale has not been of such volume that it has been possible
to take the oldest houses out of circulation and move low-income
families into more contemporary accommodation. This must be,
after all, the crucial test of the adequacy of housing supply in
general and of the filtering-down process in particular.
From whatever point of view one may examine the complex
and somewhat obscure operations of the housing market, it is at
least clear that all new housing must be paid for ultimately out
of the incomes of households in the community. The amount of
new housing construction is in fact directly related to the national
income. This can be clearly seen in Table XXV where levels of
national income and the volume of residential construction are
shown for the period 1919 to 1941. The two indices rise and fall
more or less together; when national income has been higher
there has been more housing produced. In Table XXV are also
shown the movements of building costs; though these have tended
Housing Supply and Organization 95
to move in the same periodic cycle as the other indices, yet the
changes in building costs have been far less marked than the
fluctuations in income and volume of construction. The fact that
building costs have fluctuated less than income has created a
varying differential between the two; it is this changing relation-
ship between costs and incomes that has largely determined the
extent of the market and has caused the periodic changes in
volume of construction. One would expect to find that more new
housing would be built whenever incomes were high in relation
to building costs. Table XXV confirms this expectation. The
volume of new construction has, in fact, reacted very violently to
this relationship between costs and incomes, giving a peak of
production in 1928 and a trough in 1933.
The proportions of the market for new housing are determined
by the numbers of households which can afford the current costs
of production. Normally it has been during periods when the
upper income group has been receiving relatively higher incomes
that residential construction has been stimulated and so all eco-
nomic levels have benefitted from the increased supply through
the filtering-down process. On the analogy of the market for auto-
mobiles it may be argued that the raising of incomes at lower
economic levels would have substantially the same effect, for their
improved economic circumstances would enable them to offer the
well-to-do more for their second-hand houses as they offer more
for second-hand cars; this would theoretically reduce the cost of
new housing for the well-to-do since their expenditure may be
considered to be the cost of a new house less the price or rent
obtained for the old one. This consideration leads to the conclu-
sion that a rise in the income of the community as a whole, how-
ever it may be distributed, must have the effect of stimulating
construction and so directly or indirectly benefitting all classes.
The significant feature in the creation of the housing market
would therefore seem to be the average of all family (or house-
hold) incomes or, more precisely, the relationship between this
_ average and the current cost of paying for the construction of a
new house.
96 l HOUSES For CANADIANS
But this academic interpretation of the housing market does
not reflect actual experience. It is true that families which can
afford to do so frequently buy a new car every year or two; that
is an easy turnover to make. But a home containing all the house-
hold effects and neighbourhood associations is a long-term pos-
session, and a family will not usually buy a new house more than
once during its existence as a family group. Even though there
may be a strong demand for second-hand houses by those just
below the market for new houses, yet families already quite com-
fortably housed will not respond to this demand by obligingly
moving out and building new houses.
The fact is that the new housing market is limited not only to
those who can afford a new house but is normally limited also to
those families which are in the process of establishing themselves
as family groups. This is an important limitation. For supposing
a third of the families in the community had incomes which
would enable them to buy new houses, this would not mean that
a third were “in the market” since many of these families are
already quite comfortably established and have no reason or in-
clination to move. It would be nearer the truth to state that the
market for new housing is limited to those who are positively
seeking or needing housing accommodation and also have the
financial ability to occupy a new house.
In comparing the housing market with the markets for other
kinds of durable commodities, another consideration arises.
People are induced to buy new cars and clothes and household
equipment not only because what they already possess is worn
out but because new products are more efficient or more attractive
or more fashionable. The whole battery of the advertising busi-
ness is brought into action to create a desire and a market which
might not otherwise exist. It would perhaps be fair to say that the
type of house which the building industry has recently been able
to produce in Canadian cities has been so lacking in fine qualities
or architectural design that there has been little to attract buyers
beyond the bare necessity to acquire a house. The large potential
market for all those who can afford a new house, a number far in
Housing Supply and Organization 97
excess of those within this group who are actually in need of a
new house, has been very inadequately exploited. People only
want to buy new houses or live in new apartments if the accom-
modation is more spacious, better planned, and in a more desir-
able neighbourhood than where they already live or if the new
accommodation is superior to any older dwelling unit which they
may be able to obtain. Unfortunately the building industry has
failed to improve its products to such an extent that new houses
offer sufficiently evident advantages over older houses; there have
certainly been advances in the design of the mechanical equip-
ment for heating, ventilating, cooking, and cleaning but the space,
structure, and character of new housing cannot be compared very
favourably with the products of a previous generation. It is cer-
tainly fair to assume that with the aid of skilled architectural
designers and imaginative neighbourhood planning it would be
possible to attract into new housing areas many households which
at present find the amenities of the older parts of town more con-’
genial. New neighbourhoods have been brought to completion in
an altogether too haphazard, piecemeal manner and during the
process of development have been exposed to all kinds of uncer-
tainties and risks in the provision of services. To buy and move
into a new house has not therefore seemed to be a particularly
attractive undertaking.
In the interests of the whole community it is most important
that the full potentialities of the economic housing market should
be exploited. Those who are in a financial position to buy a new
house must be encouraged to do so rather than buy old houses
and thereby place a heavier load ‘of housing production on those
who can less well afford it. As the shortages of materials and
hazards of building ease off during the coming months it may
even be regarded as the obligation of certain families to initiate
home-building. But in order to expand this market the joint efforts
of the builders, the architectural profession, and local planning
boards will have to be enlisted in order to modernize the products
of the building industry. The new single-family home and its
setting must be made an altogether more desirable possession.
98 Houses FoR CANADIANS
It has been suggested in the previous chapter that there are
about 66,000 families in the Toronto metropolitan area who might
be able to meet the cost of living in a new dwelling. It certainly
cannot be assumed that at some time during the next ten years
every household in this top income group would be directly or
indirectly responsible for the construction of a new housing unit
to give an average annual production of 6,600 units. It would, in
fact, be most optimistic to anticipate a market for more than half
this amount even if the building industry could produce a house
of the most revolutionary character which would posh the market
to its limits.
But metropolitan Toronto needs to produce additional hous-
ing units at the rate of 5,000 a year during the next ten years, in
addition to which it must also embark upon a programme of re-
placements, rising ultimately to a volume of at least 1,000 units a
year. It is evident that such a programme cannot possibly be car- `
ried out by means of the “filtering-down” process alone.
SUBSIDIES TO SUPPLEMENT THE Houstnc MARKET
It is fairly evident that the market for new housing will not
be sufficient to fill the entire needs of the community. Building
costs and the distribution of income offer fairly well-defined limits
to the market. By some means or another these limits must be
changed.
Some. expansion of the market may undoubtedly be brought
about through technological research leading to better methods
of construction and a more economical organization of building
operations. In ‘the public mind prefabrication offers the most
hopeful prospects of revolutionizing the relationship between
incomes and housing costs. But up to now these hopes have
proved all too elusive. One of the most eminent authorities on
building technique, Professor Walter Gropius, has said: “People
look upon prefabrication as an entirely revolutionary idea, but
from very extensive experience with prefabrication—I began my
experiments in 1910—I have come to see it as a slow, evolutionary
break, despite all the misleading advertisements promising John
Housing Supply and Organization 99
Doe a Sunday-magazine miracle-house when he comes back from
the war.”
If reductions in construction costs alone cannot bring about
an adequate volume of production, then it becomes necessary to
consider how the income factor might be modified. The general
level of incomes is, of course, a matter beyond the province of
housing policy, as such. Those who are concerned with housing
policy obviously cannot influence either the total income of the
community or its distribution; these are determined by economic
factors most of which are quite independent of housing. Nor, in
the light of what has been stated above, would it be wise to advo-
cate that families should spend a larger proportion of their in-
comes on housing—certainly middle- and low-income families
could not be expected to do so. But even if it is not possible,
through housing policy, either to raise the community’s total in-
come or increase the proportion of income spent on housing by
lower-income families, yet it is possible to influence the income
factor in one most important respect. This may be done through
a system of housing subsidies, a system which has been exten-
sively practised in other countries faced with a similar situation.
(The fact is, of course, that the inadequacy of family income in
relation to the costs of housing accommodation is a phenomenon
not peculiar to Canada alone, but is a characteristic of industrial
civilization as a whole.) In other countries, notably Great Britain
„and the United States, the state has entered directly into the
housing market to subsidize the rental payments of low-income
families who could not otherwise afford the housing accommoda-
tion constructed for their use. The nature of the economic process
which thus takes place may be briefly explained as follows:
The public funds required to pay housing ‘subsidies must be
raised through taxation and therefore represent reductions in the
incomes of upper-income families. Left in the possession of these
taxpayers, some part of the sum thus raised, possibly a fifth, would
perhaps have been spent on housing; but most of it would have
been spent on other items of their household budgets. Transferred
iWalter Gropius, Rebuilding Our Communities. (Chicago, 1945).
100 on Houses. ron CANADIANS
to the state? however, the. whole of this particular revenue can be
concentrated upon the production of housing. In Great Britain
and in the United States.the usual method of applying this sub-
sidy fund has been by payments made to a local housing authority
which owns and operates housing rented exclusively to low- and
moderate-income families; the subsidy payments plus the rent
revenue are together sufficient to meet the total costs of such
housing. Without such supplements to the incomes of these
families such new housing could not be brought into production
because these families are not in the economic market for new
housing. In this way, although the total income of the community
has not been changed, there has been an increase in the propor-
tion of that total income available for the production of new
housing.
The purpose of a subsidized housing programme is to increase
the supply of housing units at any time and under any circum-
stances when income levels are insufficient to meet the current
costs of housing construction, and the necessary volume of pro-
duction cannot therefore be maintained. A study of the facts con-
cerning income levels and costs seems to suggest that such a situa-
~ tion is chronic and that a failure of the housing supply in Canada,
and in Toronto particularly, will arise before the present shortage
has been overcome. A system of housing subsidies may thus have to
become a most important instrument in the hands of housing
policy-makers since it provides a well-tried means of increasing
the supply when technological improvements have reached their
limit in reducing costs. Whatever may be the. social or ethical
arguments for or against a redistribution of incomes it can at least
be said that a properly administered system of housing. subsidies
offers one method of abbreviating a housing shortage. Further-
more, a subsidy used to supplement purchasing power and so
bring more customers into the housing market, is likely to disturb
the normal operations of a country’s economy considerably less
than that other form of stimulant, a subsidy paid to the producers
of building materials. This latter form of subsidy, besides being
extremely difficult to operate without insidious choices of re-
Housing Supply and Organization . 101
cipients, may influence the market price of certain commodities
without insuring that the additional amount of housing accom-
modation so created will actually be commensurate with the
amount of subsidy paid. The undoubted advantage of a subsidy
paid directly to supplement rents of low-income families in hous-
ing constructed for the purpose lies in the fact that the subsidies
need only be paid as and when the additional housing units
actually come into existence.
The fact that housing subsidies may be used to increase the
production of housing units, and so benefit the community as a
whole, is a thesis that may be accepted quite apart from the ques-
tion as to who should be the immediate beneficiaries of such sub-
sidies and rent benefits. The policy determining rent levels and
the selection of tenants may arise out of the particular circum-
stances under which a project is constructed. During the course
of time a community's housing programme may pass through
several phases in each of which it may be appropriate to give
priority to different categories of households. During the war,
for instance, the public housing projects of Wartime Housing
Limited were specifically reserved for the accommodation of the
families of workers in key industrial plants. Following the war,
Wartime Housing Limited has. given priority to the families of
veterans with children. During subsequent phases of the pro-
gramme it will probably be necessary to give priority to families
to be removed from slum areas of the city. Other circumstances,
at present unforeseen, may direct that other groups in the com-
munity should be given the benefit of accommodation in sub-
sidized projects, providing always that they are families which
could not otherwise finance the production of new housing. In
other words it is possible to detach the general principle of hous-
ing subsidies from the discussion of the particular way in which
they may be applied. In the actual operation of housing subsidies
both in Great Britain and in the United States they have almost
invariably been applied to housing projects designed for families
in the low-income group rather than for that very extensive pro-
portion of middle-income families who cannot afford new hous-
102 i Houses ror CANADIANS
ing. This has, of course, been primarily because the subsidy pro-
' visions and low-rental housing legislation originally came into
existence in response to public pressure for an improvement of
the housing conditions in slum areas. Before the recent war both
British and American legislation contained the principle of
“equivalent elimination” to provide that subsidies would in fact
only be forthcoming where poorly housed families had been
moved from demolished slums and re-housed in better accom-
modation, But although the British housing subsidies have been
administered with this humanitarian point of view, yet the in-
ception of the programme after the previous war, in 1919, had as
its principal motive the need to overcome a housing shortage; in
a sense the same may be said of the years immediately preceding
1939 when the elimination of overcrowding, the principal mani-
festation of a housing shortage, was the objective of all public
housing authorities.”
But it is quite logical that objection should be raised to the
policy of benefitting the lowest income group through housing
subsidies. Why, it may be asked, confuse housing policy with
welfare policy? Why should the new accommodation provided
‘through the application of subsidies not be used for housing that
large element in the middle group whose incomes are not quite
sufficient to meet the current costs of new housing but who, with
the assistance of a subsidy, would be able to open up a new
market for housing production? Would not such a policy be more
economical in that smaller subsidies would be required to lift
these families above the line at which construction costs are pro-
2Between 1919 and 1939 over four million houses were built in Great Britain—
over a million by local authorities, about 433,000 by building societies and other
agencies aided under the housing acts, and the rest by private builders (many of
the latter in co-operation with local authority schemes). The subsidies granted
for housing built by local authorities were contributed both by the municipalities
themselves and also from the national exchequer. The capital expenditure pro-
vided by local authorities was £538 million. By 1989 the annual subsidies to which
local authorities were committed amounted. to £3,800,000 and the subsidies being
provided annually by the national government amounted to £15,300,000. There-
fore the total annual subsidy being paid towards housing low income families of
Great Britain just before the war was £19,000,000.
Housing Supply and Organization 108
hibitive? Besides, it may be argued, new housing built for middle-
income families can be filtered down to the low-income group
but the reverse process cannot take place. In order to justify the-
application of subsidies to the benefit of low-income families it
is certainly necessary to examine those objections. It may be said,
in the first place, that subsidized public housing should not be
allowed to compete with the efforts of private enterprise to serve
an increasing range of income groups; it must always remain the
objective of private enterprise to reduce costs and eventually take
over the whole of the potential market represented by the needs
of the middle-income group. It has seemed, therefore, advisable
for public housing to keep well clear of the legitimate field of un-
subsidized housing business.* However, the priicipal objection to
offering subsidies for middle-income housing is simply that it
would become impossible to define the limits of operation under
such a policy. Once the precedent had been set there would be
an inexhaustible number of equally legitimate claims for sub-
sidies. By implication half the community would become eligible
for such benefits. For this reason experience has shown the wis-
dom of attaching housing subsidies closely to the concepts of
public health and welfare. In this way it becomes possible for
public housing to establish its starting point, define the limits of
its programme, and embark upon a consistent course of action.
It thus may become the normal business of public housing to raise
the minimum standards in the community by the successive re-
tiring of the most obsolete accommodation in the area and the
substitution of modern housing. Even when the immediate situa-
tion calls for an absolute increase in the number of units, as well
as the elimination of slums, it is still possible for public housing
8To prevent subsidized public-housing from trespassing upon the territory of
private enterprise, the abortive Wagner-Ellender-Taft Bill presented to the last
United States Congress contained the provision “that a gap of at least 20 per
cent [should be] left between the upper rental limits for admission to the proposed
low-rent housing and the lowest rents at which private enterprise is providing
[through new construction and existing structures} a substantial supply of decent,
safe and sanitary housing.” (Bill S. 1592, title VII, sect. 701 (6) (11); 79th Con-
gress, 1st Session.)
104 X Housrs FOR CANADIANS
to start from the:same point of reference: The use of public funds
for subsidy purposes may. thus be given a double justification; an
economic justification in its contribution to the total number of
housing units, and a social justification i in- its preservation of
standards of living.
In Great Britain and in the United States rent Gibadics are
paid exclusively in publicly owned housing projects. Houses are
constructed and owned by the housing agencies of municipalities
and rented at less than economic rentals, the difference between
the rent revenue and the actual cost of financing and operating
the projects being paid out of public funds specifically voted for
that purpose by Act of Parliament or Congress. In order to place -
financial as well as administrative responsibility upon the local
governments and their housing agencies it has been customary
also to require that a proportion of the subsidy fund should be
raised locally. The New York City Housing Authority may be
quoted as an example of the scale of subsidy payments.* In 1944
the Authority reported that its seven federally aided projects were
under contract to receive from the Federal Public Housing Au-
thority annual subsidy payments to the amount of $1,701,407
which would enable rents to be reduced by an average amount
of $163 per family per year. It is of interest to note that the local
authority, by efficient management, had been able to reduce
operating costs and therefore had only claimed an average of
$1,385,251 each year, equivalent to $133 per family per year.
Most of the cost of providing low-rent housing in the United
States—including management expenses, repayment of the de-
velopment loans with interest, maintenance, repairs, insurance,
etc.—is borne by the tenants themselves.
But the rents that low-income families can afford to pay do not cover the
full cost. Part of the deficit is made good by the Federal Public Housing
Authority through a yearly subsidy, called the annual contribution, which
is appropriated by the Congress. The amount varies from year to year,
depending on the amount needed to keep the rentals within the tenants’
reach, but for the total programme it cannot run over $28 million in any
one year. The most. that can be paid to any local authority for a year’s
4New York City Housing Authority, Tenth Annual Report, 1944,
Housing Supply and Organization l 105
operation is limited to a percentage'of the project development cost equal
to the going federal interest rate plus 1 per cent. For example, on a $500,000
project with a percentage fixed at 314 per cent, the top federal contribution
in any one year would be $17,500. ... At least one-fifth of the annual sub-
sidy paid by F.P.H.A. must be matched by a local contribution. Both the
United States Housing Act and the State.Laws permit the localities to make
their contribution by, exempting low-rent projects from taxation, and this
has invariably been the method used to meet this requirement.’
Various practices have been followed in determining the rents
that-should be charged. Differences of opinion have arisen among
American and British housing officials over the respective merits
and disadvantages of two methods of rent determination. Advo-
cates of what are called “proportional rents” claim that no specific
rent should be attached to any particular dwelling unit but that
the rent required should be proportional to the tenant’s income.
The proponents of the system of “graded rents” on the other hand,
believe that a specific rent should be attached to each dwelling
and that rents for identical dwellings ‘should be identical. The
term “graded rents” implies that a housing project should contain
various grades or standards of accommodation.
The practice of charging rent according to the unit occupied
is probably the simpler. The rent of each dwelling is constant, .
which gives the housing authority a uniform, known income.
There are, however, some considerable objections to standard
rents. First, this system necessitates moving families from one
dwelling to another as their income changes, which in turn re-
quires a large number of dwelling units. Secondly, standard rents
may be set within the reach of the average low-income family,
but they will not admit the family with exceptionally low ability
to pay, nor will they demand any more rent from the better-off
among the group housed. Finally, a greater rent is charged for
larger accommodation, although the larger family may have less
ability to pay.
In England particular conditions obtain which have overcome
these difficulties to a great extent, so that there is an increase in
5Bulletin of the United States Federal Housing Authority, National Housing
Agency, Washington, D.C.
106 Houses FOR CANADIANS
the use of the standard rent system. The considerable public hous-
ing programmes of the last twenty-five years have resulted in a
large and varied body of municipal housing units, for which
differing rents can be charged with validity, and among which
tenants are likely to find suitable accommodation. In addition,
the increasing social security provisions have shifted much of the
burden of dependency and loss of income from the family to the
state as a whole, so that there is relatively less‘need for variations
in housing subsidy.
In the United States different conditions have produced the
opposite tendency and graded systems are being abandoned in ~
favour of systems based on ability to pay. Canadian conditions
are not identical with either of these other countries. In social
security measures we are somewhere between the two, but in
provision of public housing we are behind both.
The opponents of the proportional rent systems criticize them
mainly because these latter feature fairly wide rent differentials
between similar types-of accommodation. It is maintained that
such differentials make the public housing programme. serve a
welfare and relief function. These critics, although they do not
deny the fundamental aspect of public housing as a subsidized
service, nevertheless oppose any of its adaptations which permit
invidious personal comparisons within projects or which liken it
to the granting of relief. The discomforts and stringencies inci-
dental to particular incomes that are too low to provide sufficient
food and clothing they regard as the domain of agencies other
than public housing bodies.
It'is not appropriate here to dioe between the systems.
Clearly they are not mutually exclusive and any particular local
project may blend their features in many ways. The above com-
parison merely points out some of the difficulties and some of the
administrative decisions that must be made in executing public
housing policy. Among the chief problems are the following:
(1) At what maximum income level, if any, should tenants
be excluded? Should there be a minimum income level dis-
qualification?
Housing Supply and Organization 107
(2) Within the project should rents be adjusted to incomes
for each individual family, or should equal rents be paid by
families occupying the same class of dwelling?
(3) How are adjustments to be made in respect to tenants
whose incomes change considerably, after admission to the pro-
ject?
(4) How often should means tests be made?
Most of these decisions can best be made on a local level, taking
into account the local prejudices and attitudes. As examples of
adjusted rent systems those employed by the Chicago Housing
Authority and the Housing Authority of the City of Newark, New
Jersey, are shown in Table XXVI.
THe Locat HOUSING AUTHORITY
On January 1, 1947 the taxpayers (property owners and long-
term lease holders) of the city of Toronto were asked to vote on
the following question: “Are you in favour of the city undertak-
ing, as a low-cost or moderate cost rental housing project with
possible government assistance, the clearance, replanning, re-
habilitation and modernization of the area bounded by Parlia-
ment, River, Gerrard and Dundas Streets known as the Regent
Park (North) Plan at an estimated cost of $5,900,000?" Of the
47,442 votes cast in answer to this question 29,514, (62.5 per
cent) voted “yes” and 17,928 (37.5 per cent) voted “no.” As the
consequence of this decision made by the citizens of Toronto
there has come into existence the first local Housing Authority
established by a Canadian city. Though the Toronto Housing
Authority has been charged with the specific task of building and
operating a low-rental housing project on the Regent Park site,
its establishment sets in motion a method of procedure which may
in the future be used in operating other low-rental housing pro-
jects supported. by rental subsidies. For the operation of the
Regent Park project the municipality has itself assumed the obli-
gation to pay the subsidies that will be required in order to bring
the rents within the capacity of families who at present live in
that part of the city. The only financial assistance which the muni-
108 © Houses ror CANADIANS
cipality is likely to receive is a 50 per cent contribution from the
federal government towards the cost of land acquisition and
clearance.
The operation of low-rental housing is virtually a new de-
parture for local governments in Canada; in setting up an organi-
zation for this purpose it is therefore appropriate to benefit from
the experience of England and the United States.
In Britain low-rental projects are constructed and adminis-
tered by local governments. The costs of these projects are borne
(1) by housing subsidies contributed by the central government,
(2) by the smaller contributions from the general revenue of the
local governments themselves, and (8) by the rental payments of
the tenants. In order to cover the initial capital outlay, the local
governments may issue housing bonds for authorized undertak-
ings or they may borrow from the Public Works Loan Com-
missioner. Administrative procedures for the construction ‘and
management of housing is left very largely to the discretion of
the local authorities and practice varies widely throughout the
country. While some cities maintain a complete and centralized
housing department under a housing director responsible for all
phases of the housing programme, in other cities housing is
administered through several municipal departments with the
Estates Committee of the City Council usually guiding the _pro-
gramme as a whole. Where there is not a single housing director
it is common for the city architect to do the designing and site
planning, the city engineer to let construction contracts, the city
treasurer's department to collect rents, and the city clerk's office
to manage tenant-selection and house assignment. Such is the
variety of practice that has grown up in different English cities
that almost every possible variation of method may be found. In
general, it may be said that low-rental housing administration is
performed within the departmental organization of the municipal-
ity, and in this respect differs from the form of organization
which may be most appropriate for Canadian cities. It should be
observed, however; that in Britain the provision of publicly
owned low-rental housing has been developed. throughout:a long
Housing Supply and Organization 109
period of gradually ripening experience. The methods that have
been developed in the process of a slow evolution may not neces-
sarily be applicable to the circumstances in the city of Toronto
where the very first undertaking of this nature is to be a project
of very considerable dimensions. The form of organization that
has been adopted in United States cities seems to provide a more
suitable pattern for a housing authority for the city of Toronto.
This, in fact, conforms closely with the type of commission with
which Toronto is already familiar and which has proved very
satisfactory in the operation of public utilities.
Municipalities in the United States began to assume respon-
sibility for low-rental housing under the terms of the United
States Housing Act of 1937. There are now 479 local housing
authorities in existence which administer in all about 669,000
publicly owned housing units. Forty states have enacted special
“Housing Authority Laws” and the authorities so established have
assumed a fairly uniform character.
These local authorities are not departments of the municipal
governments but are semi-independent public corporations with
power to issue their own bonds, expropriate property, build and
operate housing within the terms of federal and state legislation.
Fach local authority consists of an appointed board of citizens
serving in a voluntary capacity and an employed staff under the
management of an official usually known as the Executive
Director. In the great majority of states (thirty-three) it is pre-
scribed that the board is to be composed of five members ap-
pointed by the mayor of the municipality; there are only minor
variations of this system. After the first appointments the mem-
bers serve for staggered or rotating terms of office. In no case do
the members of the boards receive any remuneration except for
expenditures incurred in travelling, etc. In setting up these public
authorities in relationship to municipal governments in the United
States somewhat elaborate precautions were taken to secure the
authorities against political and private influence. In most states
it is provided that no member may be either an officer or an em-
ployee of a municipality. It is usually stipulated that no member
110 Houses For CANADIANS
or employee of an authority may acquire any interest in any con-
tract or property associated with a housing project; if he has
such an interest it must be disclosed in writing to the authority.
In the majority of states a local housing authority is entitled
to own and operate housing not only within the boundaries of
the municipality by which it is appointed but also in an area
within a specified distance (3, 5, or 10 miles) of the municipality’s
boundaries. Provision is usually made, however, that a local hous-
ing authority is excluded from operating on the territory of any
other major city or town that is within this fringe area. Local
housing authorities are also established for county areas.
Though originally created to provide and manage housing
specifically for low-income families under the terms of the United
States Housing Act 1937 (and to assume management of a num-
ber of low-rental projects built by the federal government’s Public
Works Administration prior to 1937) the responsibilities of local
housing authorities have been greatly expanded during the war
years when they have been given jurisdiction over permanent
and temporary housing constructed for industrial workers and
veterans through a number of emergency measures. This housing,
some of which is not at present strictly speaking low-rental, now
represents more than half of all the units under the management
of local housing authorities. (For example, the Cleveland Metro-
politan Housing Authority administers 4,789 low-rental units con-
structed under P.W.A. and U.S.H.A., 8,745 units of wartime hous-
ing, and 1,200 veterans’ housing units. The Pittsburgh Housing
Authority has 3,073 U.S.H.A. units and 2,889 wartime units, The
Buffalo Municipal Housing Authority has 2,271 low-rental
U.S.H.A. units and 1,215 wartime units. Though there is no co-
herent public housing policy operating in the United States at
the present time it seems probable that the local housing author-
ities will revert to their former specialized role and that the war-
time projects of permanent construction will in the future be
administered on a strictly low-rental basis. The construction of
further publicly owned low-rental projects has been suspended
by the failure of Bill 1592 (known as the Wagner-Ellender-Taft
Bill) to pass through Congress.
Housing Supply and Organization 111
Although the rent revenues of projects administered by local
housing authorities are not sufficient to cover the amortisation and
operation costs, yet the authorities have financial security on
account of the subsidies paid by the Federal Public Housing Au-
thority (F.P.H.A.). For each project that has been initiated the
F.P.H.A. has contracted with the local authority to pay an annual
sum sufficient to compensate for the low rental levels. The muni-
cipalities have contributed their quota of subsidy in the form of
remitted taxation on public housing property. On account of this
security against financial deficit, the local authorities have been.
able to obtain operating capital through bond issues at a very
favourable rate of interest. Under the terms of the U.S.H.A. the
federal government offered to loan 90 per cent of the capital re-
quired, the remaining 10 per cent having to be raised by loans
from financial institutions and private sources. Confidence in the
operations of local housing authorities has, however, made it pos-
sible to obtain more advantageous financing by increasing the
proportion of private financing. For example, the New York City
Housing Authority has refunded bonds issued for six of its low-
rental projects costing $45 million as a result of which 85 per cent
of the bonds are now held privately with interest rates averaging
2,128 per cent as against the 3 or 3% per cent rate which would
have been payable on loans made by the federal government. It
may be observed also that the financial situation of the local hous-
ing authorities has been improved during the war years because
tenants able to pay more than the normal low rents have been
permitted to stay in publicly owned projects and have thereby
increased rent revenues; consequently local authorities have not
needed to claim the whole amounts of the F.P.H.A. subsidies to
which they were entitled under the terms of the United States
Housing Act.
As so often happens in establishing a procedure appropriate
to Canadian conditions, it is found that neither American nor
English methods are entirely appropriate. It is possible to adopt
the best features of the methods used in both countries. In the
case of low-rental housing we may not find it either necessary or
wise to divorce a housing authority so completely from the muni-
112 z HousEs FOR CANADIANS
cipal government as is customary in the United States; we are
fortunate in possessing traditions of integrity and high perform-
ance in both our elected and employed city officials. For this rea-
son, in the establishment of Toronto’s Housing Authority, it has
seemed appropriate to utilize the essential form of the American
pattern (which has proved to be a very satisfactory type of
agency and conforms closely with our own type of public utility
commission ), but to strengthen its links with the city. government.
This has been effected by the provision that at least one but not
a majority of the members of the board of the housing authority
should also be members of the city council, Also the invaluable
advice of heads of municipal departments has already been made
available to the board of the authority; as employed officials of
the city, however, they cannot be voting members of that board
involved in responsibility for matters of policy. The desirability
of appointing an independent authority does not arise in the
slightest degree out of any doubt concerning the technical com-.
petence of the municipality’s officials and their staffs. But it seems
particularly important that the administration of low-rental hous-
ing should be removed as far as possible from the private and
political pressures that will inevitably be brought to bear upon
operations of this kind. The acquisition of land, the granting of
construction contracts, and the selection of tenants eligible to
benefit from low rents are all procedures that should be guided
by a responsible body appointed specifically for the purpose; it
is essential that no members of this body should seek political
office or personal gain through the decisions that are made. The
significant feature of the commission form of organization is the
placing of responsibility upon a board of citizens who, without
fear or favour, may judge the absolute fairness and impartiality
with which policies are carried out by the administrative and
technical staff employed by the authority.
It will be the function of the board of the local housing au-
thority to represent the interests of the community as a whole in
the administration of the community’s publicly owned housing.
The members of the board will not. therefore represent special
Housing Supply and Organization Lis
groups or have special obligations. They should be regarded
ideally as a team of persons of relatively equal status not domi-
nated by any one of their number. The members of such a board
cannot themselves assume any administrative or executive duties
and it is therefore necessary to appoint an executive director or
manager to be solely responsible for the conduct of the authority’s
business. Subject to the approval of the board the executive
director should appoint his own staff and define their duties.
Apart from the setting of policies and the approval of their exe-
cution neither the board as a whole nor its individual members
should become involved in the administration and routine of the
housing authority's business.
In addition to the technical personnel required for the design
and construction phases of a housing project the commission will
require a management staff to select tenants, maintain relation-
ships with them, and collect rents. In view of the special nature of
a project intended for the occupation of low-income families these
duties demand the services of a particularly well-trained and
competent type of personnel. In the effort to obtain economies in
operation and maintenance costs and in order to achieve the social
benefits which are the objectives of a low-rental housing project,
the appointment of suitable management personnel will un-
doubtedly be a vital factor in the success of a housing com-
mission’s undertakings. The importance of this phase of the
housing authority’s act'zvities suggests that the executive director
himself must be a person whose experience has not been solely
_ in the field of construction and administration but who has a wide.
appreciation of the social problems which low-rental housing
should be designed to solve.
RENTAL HOUSING AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT
The carrying out of a rental-housing programme appears to
involve three different kinds. of administrative operation. There
is, first of all, the process of community planning by which
decisions must be made for the location of housing in any urban
area and for its detailed arrangement on the ground. Then there
114 HOUSES FOR CANADIANS
is the whole process of acquiring capital and the particularly diff-
cult operation of determining who should contribute to the sub-
sidy funds and in what proportion. Thirdly, there is the actual
management of housing projects and the responsibility for tenant
selection and rent collection. The more carefully these three ad-
ministrative operations are considered, the more interrelated do
they appear to be. They cannot each be considered in isolation.
As we approach the task of devising simple administrative
arrangements for rental housing we find that peculiar difficulties
immediately arise because the urban areas in which this housing
must be placed are not each governed by a single municipal body.
Each urban area is composed of a group of municipalities,
typically a central city and its surrounding suburban townships.
The problems of rental housing inevitably raise the problems of
metropolitan organization and the administrative relationships of
the municipalities within each such region. A satisfactory system
of housing administration must be devised for a kind of com-
munity which is a single unit in its economic, social, and cultural
nature but which is partitioned into several administrative dis-
tricts.
As we enter this period of national expansion we find that the
original framework of urban administration has been outgrown.
The communities of city-dwellers have overflowed the boundaries
of the incorporated municipalities originally established for their
convenience and service. In many cases xew municipalities, have
been incorporated to embrace some of the population beyond a
city’s boundaries. But a great part of this overflow of population
is living in suburban municipalities where people in urban occu-
pations have been superimposed on the population of an area
previously administered by and for its rural inhabitants. It is a
characteristic of an urban society that more elaborate and costly
public services are required to overcome the mechanical diffi-
culties of putting more people in less space; they must share the
operation, and’ costs of many services which are privately per-
formed in a rural area, and they must protect themselves against
- the conflicts and contagions which arise whenever people live in
Housing Supply and Organization 115
close proximity. Also the occupations of urban workers require
more trained skills and therefore a more elaborate educational
system; and this in turn leads to the demand for a more artificial
and expensive way of living. Difficulties must inevitably arise
when the costs of maintaining this urban way of life are thrust
upon the outlying non-urban taxpayers of townships in the process
of urbanization. The Toronto region is experiencing this difficulty
for the metropolitan area now spreads over a city, four towns,
three villages, and five townships in various phases of urbaniza-
tion. Difficulties of a similar nature exist in those smaller urban
areas where only three or four municipalities are involved.
The internal conflicts within such areas take many forms and
arise out of the distinctive pattern of each region. The accidents
of topography, the location of railways and highways, and the
economic fortunes of business enterprises have caused com-
munities to develop in a manner and in directions which could
` not have been foreseen when the municipal boundaries were first
laid down. Pressures and conflicts have inevitably arisen because
no single municipality within an urban area has found itself
equipped with a balanced proportion of residential, industrial,
and other land uses. There is no such thing as a perfectly planned
administrative area containing all the features required by its
population for living and working. There has been a balanced
unity in the metropolitaa area as a whole, but no one of the com-
ponent municipalities has been complete within itself. And so, in
the keen competition for revenue and with a spirit of sturdy
independence, each component municipality has sought to round
out its share of profitable land uses; each has sought to attract
those building enterprises whose high assessment would increase
the tax revenue and has resisted any kind of development which
would cost more to service than it yielded in taxes. Specifically it
has been the ambition of municipal councils to obtain new indus-
tries and large houses and to exclude low-cost and low-rental
housing. Since municipal councillors usually consider that they
have been elected in order to protect the local tax-rate, this is not
an unreasonable attitude. It is not, however, an attitude which
116 Hovusrs ror CANADIANS
leads to an easy resolution of the problems with which we are
concerned. For if there are to be industries there must also be
housing for the employees; and this must include a reasonable
proportion of low-rental housing unless industries are prepared
to pay a scale of wages greatly in excess of what is now contem- |
plated. Also, if there are to be people of prosperity owning houses
of high assessed value, there must also be people of moderate and
low income to operate the factories and businesses on which that
prosperity is based. The economy and the society of the metro-
politan area must be viewed as one whole. Amongst other social
requirements a metropolitan community must have open spaces
and must have low-rental housing; the costs of these should be
assessed against all who benefit from the economic operations of
the metropolis as a whole. It may, in fact, be said that the effort
of any municipality to exclude its proportionate share of those
community features which cost money rather than create revenue
is a resistance to the basic doctrine of democracy—that taxation
should be based on the ability to pay.
To overcome these conflicts two obvious courses of action sug-
gest themselves, One is to re-define the limits of urban develop-
ment and to merge all the municipalities within the area into one
large municipal corporation. This is not a realistic proposal for
it is generally believed that there is a real value in retaining the
sturdy local independence that has grown up in each component
municipality; nevertheless mergers should certainly be en-
couraged whenever the municipalities are mutually willing. The
other course of action which has been successfully carried out
in very large metropolitan areas is the establishment of the
“borough” system; by this means the metropolitan municipalities
enter into a kind of federal union, merging certain of their admin-
istrative and financial operations but retaining their corporate
independence and the responsibility for certain local affairs. The
classic examples of such a system are New York and London,
England. Since 1898 the city of New York has consisted of five
boroughs (Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Rich-
mond); the presidents of the boroughs, together with the mayor,
Housing Supply and Organization 117
the city controller and the president of the city council sit as a
metropolitan board having a large number of administrative and
coordinating functions and managing the city’s sinking funds.
London, on the other hand, contains twenty-eight boroughs and
is administered by the London County Council which is directly
responsible for certain administrative functions such as public
welfare, education, and town-planning, and which is empowered
to make by-laws which are administered by the borough councils. |
It is to be observed that both in New York and London housing
administration is conducted by the metropolitan authority. (The
London County Council has erected about 92,000 units of public
housing and. the New York City Housing Authority about 19,000
units.) A number of large American cities have been able to con-
solidate their metropolitan organization through the development
of the county as the administrative area (Los Angeles, San Fran-
cisco, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and St. Louis). In Canada the only
example of a coordinated metropolitan government is Montreal.
Here the Montreal Metropolitan Commission assumes certain ad-
ministrative functions for the city. and its fourteen neighbouring
municipalities. The costs of its operations are borne by all these
municipalities jointly, the share of each being proportioned to the
total’assessed value of property from which local revenue is de-
rived. (In 1946-47 the city’s share was 79.8 per cent of the whole. )
The solution to our present housing problems cannot wait
upon the reconstituting of our metropolitan governments. It is
necessary to devise methods of administration based on a rational-
ization of the present circumstances. A good deal of progress
towards such rationalization is now being made through the
processes of town planning or community planning. In many
urban areas planning boards are now setting out the limits of
urban development by zoning regulations and by the control of
subdivisions; this may be regarded as an important step towards
the re-definition of the areas of urban government. However, the
special contribution of a planning board and its technical staff is
the objective detachment with which it appraises the conditions
and needs of the community. A planning board working in a
118 HOUSES ror CANADIANS
metropolitan area inevitably looks at the economy of the area as
a whole because employment, business operations, and traffic are
not confined by municipal boundaries. Though a planning board
must be aware of these boundaries that cut across the land, yet
the attempt to plan the uses of the land in the most economic and
appropriate way will show their comparative irrelevance, In
devising a rational plan for the distribution of industrial, resi-
dential, and recreational land a planning board cannot assume
that each suburban municipality is to be regarded as an economic
and social organization complete within itself. It might be evident
for instance that the amenities of the whole metropolitan com-
munity would be greatly enhanced if no further urban develop-
ment were permitted in one particular suburban township. Or it
might appear advisable to define an industrial area in one muni-
cipality and in a neighbouring township establish sites for low-
rental housing to be occupied by the employees of such industries.
It is not necessary to pursue this theme further in order to
show that the locating of a low-rental housing project in any
municipality should not be regarded as a justification for impos-
ing upon that particular group of taxpayers the costs that may be
involved in such an enterprise. If the industries and businesses in
the metropolitan area require the services of workers at moderate
and low incomes, then their families must be housed somewhere
nearby, and any local costs involved should be assessed against.
the metropolitan area as a whole. Because the economy of the
urban region is based upon certain industries and services which
must pay wages that are not commensurate with the costs of
private-enterprise housing, there is clearly no justification for
imposing a tax upon a particular group of citizens who happen to -
live in the municipality where low-income families can most con-
veniently ‘be housed. In this the central city and the suburban
municipalities have mutual obligations. Any costs or deficits of
jow-rental housing that must be carried by municipal taxpayers
should be borne jointly by all the municipalities in the metro-
politan area, and the share of each should be in proportion to its
revenue-raising capacity. l
Housing Supply and Organization 119
This of course raises the question as to whether municipal
taxpayers should be expected to make any contribution at all to-
wards the costs of low-rental housing. It has been pointed out
above that any additional taxes on property must have the effect
of raising the cost of housing and so contradict the very purpose
of measures for reducing housing costs. Therefore, should higher
levels of government, provincial or federal, provide all the sub-
sidy funds required and make good all the deficits arising from
inadequate local tax revenue?
In attempting to answer this question we must observe what
is generally regarded to be a sound principle of public and private
business—that only those who contribute the funds for an under-
taking can claim authority over their expenditure. There cannot
be taxation without representation or representation without
taxation. If a community is to retain the freedom to plan its own `
development and administer the housing of its citizens, it cannot
at the same time place the whole financial responsibility upon a
higher level of government. While the federal government will
undoubtedly be expected to provide the major part of the sub-
sidy funds required for low-rental housing, yet there must be
some measure of financial participation by the local community
if it is to preserve its constitutional rights in the administration of
its own affairs. The privileges of local government go hand in
hand with its obligations.
There can be little doubt that the management of housing
should be a responsibility of local government rather than a
function of the federal or provincial governments or their
agencies. In the long and honourable traditions of British local
government the fabric of a town—its buildings, services, and
amenities—have been the particular concern of the local citizens
who incorporate themselves to conduct this business through
their own elected representatives. Though these traditions were
formed at a time when houses were exclusively private property
and the conception of public or corporately-owned housing had
not appeared on the scene, yet it is a serious departure from sound
constitutional traditions for a senior government to own resi-
120 Houses ror CANADIANS
dential property and so interpose its authority and judgment
between the householder and his locally elected representatives.
The political implications of such a relationship are distinctly
- disturbing. It is for this reason that in Chapter v above we have
emphasized the role of the local housing authority. But, in view
of the need which we have now revealed for housing to be ad-
ministered on a metropolitan basis, it is necessary to enlarge the
functions of the housing authority so that it may locate, own, and
manage projects in any of the municipalities in an urban area.
The metropolitan housing authority should be a creature of the
whole group of municipalities, deriving its authority, and some
part of its operating funds from them jointly.
We have attempted to examine -briefly the administrative
problems arising out of the need for rental ‘housing. It is not our
intention here to discuss in detail the exact procedures by which
these problems may be solved, but only to suggest the basic prin-
ciples which seem to be involved. Local situations and the cus-
toms and legislation of each province will require variations of
practice. A similarity rather than a uniformity of procedure is
desirable. In conclusion the basic principles may be stated thus:
(1) In any urban area rental housing should be placed on the
sites which are most suitable in relation to the economy and
amenities of the area as a whole, and disregarding municipal
boundaries. .
(2) Any housing project in which rents are set below the
economic level by means of funds raised by public taxation should
be owned and managed by a local public authority.
(3) A minor proportion of the funds required to achieve such
lowered rentals should be contributed by the taxpayers in the
urban area which benefits from such housing.
(4) Each municipality in such an urban area should con-
tribute funds in proportion to the total assessed value of the
property from which each obtains its revenue.
Chapter Six: THE ULTIMATE
HOUSING PROBLEM
WHEN World War II came to an end, the pinch of Canada’s hous-
ing shortage was felt keenly by people in all kinds of economic
circumstances. This experience was not confined to households
at any one economic level. Generals, corporals, executives, clerks,
professional people, industrial workers—all found themselves
caught in the same kind of situation. In the general re-shuffle that
has taken place during the subsequent months and years, those
in better economic circumstances have been the first to benefit.
Many who could afford to do so have bought old houses at in-
flated prices. And as the supply of new houses has come in, it has
been a relatively privileged section of the community that has
in this way been released from the squeeze; for the purchase of a
$7,000 house is beyond the capacity of the average Canadian
wage-earner.
As the housing market closes in on the margin of its economic
potentialities it is to be expected that the remaining impact of the
shortage will be: confined more and more to those in the least
favourable economic circumstances. As upper-income families
move into new houses there will be a releasing of the pressure
from the top downwards. Those at the lower end of the scale will
‘inevitably be the last to benefit and, if the shortage cannot in fact
be overcome, it will be the low-income families who will be the
ultimate victims. They will have no alternative but to remain
overcrowded in the worst housing or, when no permanent accom-
modation is available, they must become the tenants of tempor-
ary housing. Already there are thousands of Canadian families in
emergency housing without any apparent prospect of moving
121
122 . Houses FOR CANADIANS
elsewhere. (By the end of 1947 there were in Toronto alone
nearly 5,000 families in emergency housing provided by the city. )
Under these circumstances the most obsolete housing in Cana-
dian cities has to be retained in use and continues to command a
rental value.
The severity of the housing shortage must be measured in
terms of human distress. Children and adults crowded into small
quarters cannot escape from the frictions and frustrations occa-
sioned by too close and too constant proximity. The humiliations,
squalor, ugliness and functional inadequacy of obsolete and tem-
porary housing leave their permanent mark upon the occupants.
It is for this reason that the ultimate territory on which a com-
munity must face its problems of housing shortage is in the slums
and blighted areas. The inevitable cycle of housing history brings
us back to this.
Before the war, what was customarily referred to as “the
housing problem” was that unwholesome condition in which a
large number of low-income families had to live; this was a prob-
lem conveniently remote from the interests and experience of
most people in a Canadian city. Since the war we have come to
speak of the shortage as “the housing problem”; it was at first
regarded as a temporarily embarrassing situation which would
cease to exist when peace-time production got under way. These
two “housing problems” have commonly been regarded as of
quite a different nature, one being a matter solely within the
province of health and welfare systems and the other being
. simply a problem of production. The fact is, of course, that the
two problems are one and the same. Slum conditions are simply
the ultimate form of a housing shortage. To state that there are
slums, blighted areas, and emergency housing is simply another
way of saying that there is a shortage of houses of adequate
standard.
A shortage of housing is not a new phenomenon. In Canadian
cities the situation has been in the process of development for a
long time, particularly since 1930 when the incoming supply of
new housing began to lag seriously. The rapid growth of the
The Ultimate H ousing Problem 123
urban wage-earner population, during and since the recent war,
has finally brought matters to a head because the great mass of
this population cannot afford to buy the new housing that it
needs. So far Canadian communities have met this situation in an
entirely negative manner; some of their citizens have been ex-
pected to lower their standard of living and lower their standard
of housing. The poorest families have had to occupy undesirable
housing and pay the rent that it has commanded even though this
has been greatly in excess of their real capacity. It has been
shown that low-income families have habitually had to pay a
larger proportion of their incomes for housing accommodation
than has been paid by families in easier circumstances. Even if
low-income families had paid the same proportion, many of them
would still have been unable to maintain a standard of living
which has received general recognition by the community of
which they are members.
The ultimate objective of the national housing programme
should be the provision of a decent dwelling for every Canadian
family. From this it follows that the crucial and ultimate test of
the effectiveness of housing policy is the condition of the worst
housed families in our communities. The task will not be com-
pleted until obsolete housing has been removed and every Cana-
dian family has been given the opportunity to enjoy healthy and
satisfying living conditions. It is a task which undoubtedly re-
quires all the technical ingenuity and administrative skill which
the Canadian people possess.
Obviously the most convenient and economical way of pro-
viding the community with an adequate supply of decent accom-
modation is through the economic market for new housing. If
those who can afford to own or to rent new housing could main-
tain such a volume of production that every family could be well-
housed and obsolete housing could be successively removed, then
in the process of time there would be no housing problem, All the
resources of science and industry must be applied to the removal
of the obstructions at the point where, in a free economy, the
bulk of the housing supply should be concentrated—at the mid-.
124. HousES FOR CANADIANS
point in the income scale. Unless a balance in the ratio between
incomes and housing costs can be established, the shortage will
continue to stack up against families in the lower-income ranges,
Unhappily, any study of the economic factors involved seems to
lead inevitably to the conclusion that a balance of incomes and
housing costs is most unlikely to be established at a level which
would produce an adequate supply of housing. This has certainly
been the experience of all other industrialized nations and there
are no factors peculiar to our economy which indicate that
Canada is likely to be an exception to this experience. In fact, the
requirements of shelter in our stern climate are likely to make the
economics of housing in Canada specially intractable.
If this conclusion is well founded it will be necessary to devise
a means whereby a larger proportion of the national income may
be directed into the production of housing. It will be necessary
to supplement the supply of housing created by the private mar-
ket. Under the social and economic conditions characteristic of
a society such as ours, the recourse to public housing and the.
operations of rental subsidies seems to be an expedient which
cannot be avoided if the national housing programme is to be
maintained. By the very force of circumstances Canada is already,
in fact, embarked upon such a course; the projects of Wartime |
Housing Limited and the emergency housing operated by muni-
cipalities are all both publicly owned and subsidized. (The city
of Toronto, alone so far amongst Canadian municipalities, has
undertaken to build rental housing through its own public hous-
ing authority because there is no other way in which such rental
housing can be produced. )
Before the post-war housing programme is much further ad-
vanced it seems inescapable that there will be much public dis-
cussion as to the future extent and permanency of public housing
in Canada. In discussions of this subject it is found that some are
born “public housers” and their views on the matter are blurred
by an emotional aura, while some have public housing thrust
upon them reluctantly and refuse to accept it as more than an
emergency measure. Too few are able to achieve a rational view
The Ultimate Housing Problem 125
of this evidently essential element in a national housing pro-
gramme, The problem is, of course, of a political nature since it
involves the relative responsibilities and functions of govern-
ment—federal, provincial, and municipal. The choice of methods
and the exact allocation of responsibilities will, quite properly,
arouse differences of political opinion, for such is the process by
which decisions are made in a democracy. Differences of opinion
are to be appreciated rather than repressed. But differences of
approach toward the subject of low-rental housing should not be
allowed to obscure the central and non-political fact that the pro-
vision of this type of accommodation is the ultimate housing
problem. This is no longer a matter of controversy. Nor is there
much value in debating the fact that, to date, there is no known
method of providing low-rental housing except through public
agencies supported by some kind of contribution from public
revenue. t
No amount of statistical research and no authoritative dog-
matic pronouncements can specify the extent to which public
housing should be taken, because no one can foresee the extent
to which the private market will succeed in fulfilling any com-
munity’s needs. The potentialities of the economic market and
the resources of the private builder must be extended to their
limits both in providing additional housing in suburban areas and
in effecting replacements in the interiors of cities.
It must be admitted that there are not at present very hopeful
prospects of extending the economic market through a reduction
in housing costs. Unless the Canadian people are prepared to
make a revolutionary attack upon wage-rates and upon interest-
rates the only direction in which it is- possible to seek significant
economies is in the building-process itself. Though prefabrication.
still gleams like a bright star on the horizon, it is only realistic to
confess that it is still very far away. Much of the genius of Ameri-
can industrialists and much public capital has been made avail-
able to prefabrication enterprises in the United States since the
war, but in 1947 only 5 per cent of new dwellings in the United
States came from this source and prices proved to be no lower
126 Housss FOR CANADIANS
than those achieved by old-fashioned methods. This sceptical
interpretation of the facts before us does not make it any less
necessary to pursue with energy the innumerable minor features
of economy by which the housing market can be broadened, But
it would be foolish to imagine that the combined effect of all the
known economies in production would be sufficient to invalidate
the main conclusion at which we have arrived, namely that the
economic market cannot by itself fulfil the housing needs of the
Canadian people.
If it does not prove possible to extend the housing market
very significantly by bringing the price of new housing within
the capacity of more Canadian families, there still remains one
aspect of the market to which little attention has been given. It
will become increasingly important to improve the quality of new
housing in order to attract a larger proportion of those who can
well afford to own or rent a new dwelling unit. So far it has been
the purpose of housing legislation and the aim of lending institu-
tions to concentrate on the lower fringe, as it were, of the housing
market. The product of post-war residential construction has con-
sequently been of a uniformly drab and uninspired character,
-~ hewing closely to the line of minimum standards and creating in
the suburban areas an environment most unattractive to higher-
income families. Many who could afford to live in new accom-
modation have preferred to pay $15,000 or $20,000 for a used
house more than twenty years old. Little has been done to create
well-planned estates containing small, efficient houses of sophisti-
cated design, grouped in a pleasant landscape setting, and selling
at prices from $8,000 to $15,000; housing of this character would
attract economically stable families who are at present not at all
interested in the crude products of the speculative builder. In
other words, even if building costs cannot be revolutionized it is
still possible that greatly improved architectural design and
neighbourhood planning would uncover a market that has not yet
been exploited. It would, moreover, be sound public policy to
develop this part of the market, rather than to push to dangerous
limits that fringe of the housing market which is based on families
The Ultimate Housing Problem 127
having less economic security, many of whom are now assuming
amortisation payments beyond their real capacity. Is it possible
that a renaissance of domestic architecture and community plan-
ning may yet prove to be one of the most important factors in
solving our housing problems and in reducing the proportions of
the programme that must be carried out by public housing
agencies? A vigorous stimulation of popular interest in modern
architecture and planning might release emotional forces which
would generate a new momentum of effective housing demand.
In this connection it may be said that an opportunity to de-
velop model housing estates is now offered by the new legislation
entitling insurance companies to finance land improvements in
suburban areas; with the co-operation of local planning boards
there is, for the first time, an opportunity to plan whole neigh-
bourhood units, control their architectural and landscape design,
and bring them to’ completion in an orderly and logical fashion.
Though the strengthening of the housing. market by such means
will not eliminate the need for some form of publicly-owned
rental housing, yet its influence in maintaining a steady volume of
supply will certainly moderate the pressure now being brought
on middle-income and low-income families.
This study of housing problems has been conceived and ex-
pressed largely in economic terms. In the last analysis, however,
we may well come to the conclusion that the successful accom-
plishment of a national housing programme will ultimately de-
pend not upon economic considerations but upon the philosophy_
and temperament of the Canadian people. The economic market
for housing is likely to lag from sheer inertia and boredom unless
the carrying out of the programme is generally regarded as a
great creative national enterprise, exciting all the imaginative,
aesthetic, and emotional faculties of the people. There must be a
dramatic satisfaction in the building of new communities rather
than a sense of futility in the scattering of bungalows upon the
reluctant suburbs.
It has been argued here that the amount of obsolete housing
which has been allowed to accumulate within our cities and the
128 . Houses FoR CANADIANS
mounting numbers of families housed in emergency accommoda-
tion together represent a backlog of residential construction
which cannot now be cleared by the supply which will come in
from the private housing market. If this is true, then it becomes
clear also that ultimately the solution to this central problem of
housing involves the forming of a philosophy concerning the
rights and equities within our society. For if it is not considered
important that every adult and every child in a Canadian com-
munity should be able to enjoy a certain way of life, then there
is no housing problem.
Appendix: TABLES I to XXVI
TABLE I
RELATIONS BETWEEN HEALTH AND Housing Conprrions, Toronro, 1934
Incidence of Tuberculosis
In Good Housing areas the incidence was 25 per 10,000 population
Poor 87
Worst 64
Infant Mortality Rate
In Good Housing areas the rate was 58.3 per 1,000 living births
Poor 72.6
Worst 121.2
Juvenile Delinquency Rate
In Good Housing areas the rate was 7.9 cases per 10,000 population
Poor 27.6
Worst 36.6
Source: Report of the Lieutenant Governors Committee on Housing in
Toronto (Toronto, 1934).
129
180 ` Appendix
TABLE II f
RECORDED CHANGES IN HEALTH OF POPULATION MOVED FROM SLUM
CONDITIONS TO MODERN HOUSING |
In Slum In Modern In Whole
Area Housing City
"Liverpool, England 1918-1920
Death-rate per 1,000 87.0 26.8 18.0
Deaths from T.B. 4.0 1.9 L7
Infant mortality rate 259 162 119
*Liverpool, England 1928-1924
Death-rate per 1,000 28.4 18.2 18.9
Deaths from T.B. per 10,000 299 164 128
Infant mortality rate 177 131 98
*#Newark, N.J. 1942-1943
T.B. per 10,000 ages 15-40 ° 58.8 29.2
Infant mortality rate 41.5 34.7
Communicable diseases, under 15 158.1 114.2
** Philadelphia, Penn. 1943
T.B. death-rate per 1,000 5.98 ~ 83.
Pneumonia death-rate per 1,000 5.86 83
Source:
*Handbook For Research in the Social Aspects of Housing (Washing-
ton, United States Housing Authority, November 1941).
**The Cost of Slums in Newark (City of Newark Housing Authority,
1946). i
© Appendix
131
TABLE III
INCREASES OF POPULATION AND Housing 1931-1945 Toronto
METROPOLITAN AREA
Ratio of
(A) (B) (A) to (B)
Toronto, city
Forest Hill, vill.
Leaside, tn.
Long Branch, vill.
Mimico, tn.
New Toronto, tn.
Swansea, vill.
Weston, tn.
Scarborough, twp.
York, twp.
East York, twp.
North York, twp.
Etobicoke, twp.
Totals
Suburban Municipalities
Metropolitan Area
Increase in Increase in. Number of
Population Housing Units Persons
1981-1945 1981-1945 Per Unit
60,278 8,052 TA
9,421 2,405 3.91
9,234 2,866 3.22
1,683 410 4.10
2,957 654 4.52
8,863 (600) °6,48
2,749 694 3.96
1,731 504 3.43
7,270 2,132 3.81
22,546 4,602 4.89
14,217 3,778 3.76
15,446 4,926 3.18
12,203 3,562 3.56
108,320 27,815 3.71
163,598 35,867 4.56
Source: Humphrey Carver, How Much Housing Does Greater Toronto Need?
(Toronto, 1946).
*Records for residential construction in New Toronto are only available from
1937, and it is not therefore possible to present valid figures for this ratio. There
are reasons for believing that this approximation is not far from the truth.
132 Appendix
TABLE. TV .
SUB-STANDARD Deine IN, g. CANADIAN (CITIES -AS RECORDED BY THE 1941
» CENSUS.:
De in Need of External Repair and/or Lacking or With Shared Use
X pat Fiuk Tonei and CBee Facilities.
Percentage of All
oe Numb of Dwellings Dwellings in the City
Toronto , oe: 5 . . 42,226 29
Montteal ed 54,875 27
Vancouver a: .. “19,571 “OT
Winnipeg ae © 17,821 a, 8B.
Quebec’ = <, 12,230 i “45
Hamilton, ee. ¿| 11,275 . 28
Edmonton ae ...,. 10,787 ~ AB
Calgary Dy. -18,3800 eee
Ottawa. ne 8,176 eed
Windsor fal os ~l 7,887 a:
London“ KAA ` 6,811 83 ee
Regina PES <.. 6,618 | AB
Halifax ` ae . 5,886 > 4&3
Saint John i 5,575 460
Source:: ` Advisory. Committee on "Reconstruction, Report IV,. Housing and.
Community Planning’ (Ottawa, March 1944), and Dominion
Bureau of Statistics 1941 Census’ ` a ea as
Peer
Appendix e
TABLE: V:
PROGRESS oF “House: PROGRAMME, Toronto METROPOLITAN AREA,
1981- 1947 ©
Valueof ET : Number of New Units (2) |
Contracts Awarded (1) ` -City Suburbs Metropolitan Area
19831 * ‘1,639 1,746 3,885
1932 : a ' "192, 786 i 978
19383 + ` ` 220 601 o o Booe
1934 ae 846,900 ~ 295 798 ~ 1,098
1935 >- 11,963,800 570 1,011 1,581
1936 ~.-*= 18,086,700 369 1,565 1,934
1937 8.02 14,049,900 . 618 1,442 >. 2,060 ©
1988 <.22. 18,210,500 '. 627 1,884 ~ L91
1989 `.: 15,435,000 . 458 2,518 : 2,976
1940 ..2. 14,930,600 524 2,781 8,305
1941 ~~ -o 15;476,400 . 356 8,264. 8,620
1942 18,819,800 ~" ` ‘495 ~ “2,201 ° ; 2,696 °
1943 14,713,400 633 1,823 2,456
1944 20,865,400 476 2,396 2,872
1945 26,011,300 879. 2,654 8,583 (3)
1946 © = 25,105,100 - ` 417 4,030 4,447
19472. i n2071,300. = > 568. 3,689 40241-
Sources:
o(2) “Value of PET contracts awarded” from MacLean Building
i Reporter,
' (2) | “Number of new units” 1981- 44 from cad of the municipalities
in the area. See Carver, How Much Housing Does Greater Toronto
‘Need?
(3) “Number of new units” 1945, 1946, and 1947 from Housing
Statistics peblished by the Dominion Bureau of Statistics. ,
134
1945
1946
1947
Source: Housing in Canada, II(4), Oct., 1947.
TABLE VI
Appendix —
Costs or BUILDING MATERIALS AND OF LIVING IN CANADA
Cost of Building Materials
(1985-1939==100)
First Quarter
Second
Third
Fourth
First Quarter
Second
Third
Fourth
First Quarter
Second
. Third
Fourth
145.3
144.6
144.4
144.6
145.8
152.6
152.9
158.7
171.1
180.7
191.1
(210.9)
Cost of Living
(1935-1939==100)
. 118.6
119.1
120.3
119.9
120.0
122.1
125.4
127.0
127.9
132.9
137.3
143.9
TABLE VII
VALUE OF RESIDENTIAL CONSTRUCTION AND TOTAL CONSTRUCTION,
TORONTO METROPOLITAN AREA, 1934-1947
1934
1935
1936
1937
1938
1939
1940
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
1946
1947
Residential
Construction
$
10,846,900
11,963,800
13,036,700
14,049,900
18,210,500
15,435,000
14,930,600
15,476,400
18,819,800
14,718,400
20,865,400
26,011,300
25,105,100
21,071,800
Total
(All Forms
of Construction)
© $
20,150,700
22,618,500
21,358,200
22,112,000
24,485,900
24,485,900
29,403,100
32,142,900
24,036,100
24,066,800
36,580,700
50,169,500
75,974,700
75,506,000
~ Source: MacLean Building Reporter.
Residential as
Percentage of Total
% .
53
53
60
56
Appendix 185
TABLE VII
TYPES or RESIDENTIAL ACCOMMODATION BUILT IN THE TORONTO
METROPOLITAN AREA Duninc 1945, 1946, ann 1947
Type of Accommodation 1945 1946 1947 Total Per cent
Single dwelling 2,727 8,869 3,242 9,838 |
Semi-detached or double 854 180 296 = 89
Row or terrace 8 5 6
Duplex 6 28 16 e
Triplex — 8 8 6 5
Apartment or flat 49 13 98 160
Apartment with business premises 14 156 175 345
Conversions and reconversions 300 248 182 725 6
_ Total 3,458 4,447 4,018 11,923 100
Source: Housing Statistics 1945, 1946, 1947 (Ottawa: Dominion Bureau of
Statistics).
TABLE IX
TYPE OF CONSTRUCTION USED ALL HOUSING COMPLETED IN TORONTO
METROPOLITAN AREA 1945 anp 1946
Percentage of All Housing
Type of Housing by Materials Used Constructed
SINGLE FAMILY HOUSES
(a) Wood frame with wood siding or shingles 25.5
(b) Wood frame and brick veneer 2.0
(c) Cinder or cement blocks and stucco 2.1
(d) Brick facing and masonry blocks 22.6
(e) Solid brick -> 30.4 82.6
MULTIPLE UNIT HOUSES
(a) Wood frame with siding or shingles 1.7
(b) Brick facing and masonry blocks 2.4
(c) Solid brick 4.3 8.4
CONVERSIONS 6.6
OTHER 4 2.4
100.0
Source: Housing Statistics 1945, 1946.
186 Appendix
: TABLE x
AMOUNTS AND VALUES OF MATERIALS REQUIRED IN THE CONSTRUCTION OF
OnE REPRESENTATIVE DWELLING Unit, SINGLE-Untr House Tyrer
Ger. , WITA Woop FraME anD. Woop Sipinc,. Toronto, 1947
Kind of Building Type of Unit Cost Per Unit Number.:
-: Materials Used of Material of Material of Units. Value
l i $ DEEE J
I. Cement, Gravel, and Sand ier
1. Cement Bags (4) 8.15 250 196:88
2. Aggregates for pa TE EE E
concrete Cu., yds. . = 890 o 56-- 218.40
3. Concrete blocks Number. Scam ae "o
Sub-total ade, . aa . 415.28
Il. Bricks, Tile, and Stone Sie Stith eds Aeri teeta, dees a
1. Bricks for chimneys No. 27,00 M 1,000 27.00
2. Brick for exterior
walls No.
3. Field tile sub-drainage Ft. 24 180 43.20
4. Vitrified flue linings Ft | .86 50 18.00
Cee od _ 88.20
IIL Tambor and Its Products 5 ae -
l. Structural (dimension) . m & ab .
lumber ` : B.M. ft. 69. 00 M 6,400 : 441.60
2. Yard lumber, rough and
surfaced - B.M. ft. 73, 00 M ` 6,000- 438.00
3. Wood clapboard for... 0. 05s Se gee Ty Em
exterior walls Sq.ft. ae. 88.50 M : 1,800 - 150.30
4. Exterior millwork: g EE S E a ns
doors, wiridows, porch epee ae eee Gudea Balan!
© „frames, cornices B.M. ft. 206.00 M -200 © ` 247.20
5. Floorings: hardwood B.M. ft. 137.00 M 750 102.75
6. Floorings: softwood B.M. ft. _ 94.00M 77:7507 <: 70:50
7. Interior millwork: mre, SoA Ta a
. doors, doors and : BE, DEED ee
'.. window trim, base- pera oS
boards ~ = B.M. ft. 237.00 M 920 218.04
8. Interior millwork: a E
:- kitchen cupboards B.M. ft. 80 128.60
9. -Strapping L. ft.
Sub-total 0 _ 4,791.99
Appendix
TABLE. X (CONT'D)
‘187
‘AMOUNTS AND VALUES OF MATERIALS REQUIRED IN THE CONSTRUCTION OF
ONE REPRESENTATIVE DWELLING Unt, SuincLe-Unir House TYPE
wit Woop Frame anp Woop Supine, TORONTO, 1947
Kind of Building l Type of Unit. Cost Per Unit Number
: > Materials Used ‘of Material ~ of Material of Units Value
IV. Lath, Plaster, and Insulation Materials. K
1. Rock wool Sq. ft. l 6.35 C 2,100. 138.35
| 2. Interior plaster, on`: Weta :
gypsum, fibre board, uii : : :
.. ... or wood lath Sq. yds. .66 400 264.00
z8.. Building paper, inside Rolls 2.82 Kei 19.74
.. 4.. Building paper, outside Rolls 2.47 8 19.76
5. Exterior. plaster— Ahs SS ng
stucco 0 Sq. yds.
Sub-total +. 436.85
V. Roofing Materials ; 3, of
1. Shingles `- Squares 7.30 15 109.50
. +2.: Dry felt, 20 yr. proof Rolls ee
ne Lar felt . Rolls
4. Pitch Lbs.
5. Gravel Tons
Sub-total “109,50
VI. Paint and Class ` 132:00
VIE. Plumbing Equipment and Fixtures i . 800.00
VIII. Heating:Equipment and:Fixtures: > 250.00
IX. Electrical Equipment and: Fixtures, a 189.00
X. Other Materials -194.00
-Total 3,856.82
Source: Based on materials’ specifications in Manpower and Material
Requirements for a Housing Program in Canada.
`
138 Appendix
TABLE XI
AMOUNTS AND VALUES OF MATERIALS REQUIRED IN THE CONSTRUCTION OF
ONE REPRESENTATIVE DwELLING UNIT, SincLe-Unir House
Tyre wrr Som Brick, Toronto, 1947
Kind of Building Type of Unit Cost PerUnit Number
Materials Used of Material of Material of Units Value
$ $
I. Cement, Gravel, and Sand
1, Cement Bags (4) 3.15 250 196.88
2. Aggregate for l
concrete Cu. yds. 3.90 56 218.40
3. Concrete blocks Number ;
Sub-total 415.28
H. Bricks, Tile, and Stone
1. Bricks for chimneys No. 27.00 M 1,000 27.00
2. Bricks for exterior
walls No. 83.00 M 22,000 726.00
3, Field tile sub-drainage Ft. 124 180 48.20
4. Vitrified flue linings Ft. 36 50 18.00
Sub-total 814.20
II. Lumber and Its Products
1. Structural (dimension)
lumber B.M. ft. 72.00 M 5,000 360.00
2. Yard lumber, rough `
and surfaced B.M. ft. 78.00 M 4,300 318.90
8. Wood clapboard for
exterior walls Sq. ft.
4, Exterior millwork:
doors, windows, porch
frames, cornices B.M. ft. 206.00 M 1,700 350.20
5. Floorings: hardwood B.M. ft. 137.00 M 750 102.75
6. Floorings: softwood B.M. ft. 94.00 M 750 70.50
7. Interior millwork: l -
doors, doors and
window trim, base-
boards - B.M. ft. 237.00 M 920 218.04
8. Interior millwork:
kitchen cupboards B.M. ft. 80 123.60
9. Strapping L. ft. 1.10C 400 4.40
Sub-total 1,543.39
Appendix 189
TABLE XI (CONT’D)
AMOUNTS AND VALUES OF MATERIALS REQUIRED IN THE CONSTRUCTION OF
One REPRESENTATIVE DWELLING UNIT, SINGLE-Unit HOUSE
TYPE WITH SoLip Brick, Toronto, 1947
Kind of Building Type of Unit Cost Per Unit Number
Materials Used of Material of Material of Units Value
$ $
IV. Lath, Plaster, and Insulation Materials
1. Rock wool Sq. ft. 6.35 C 650 41.28
2. Interior plaster, on
gypsum, fibre board,
or wood lath Sq. yds. .66 400 264.00
3. Building paper, inside Rolls
4. Building paper, outside Rolls
5. Exterior plaster—
stucco Sq. yds.
Sub-total : 805.28
V. Roofing Materials
1. Shingles Squares 7.30 15 109.50
2. Dry felt, 20 yr. proof Rolls
3. Tar felt Rolls
4. Pitch Lbs.
5. Gravel Tons
Sub-total 109.50
VI. Paint and Glass 107.00
VII. Plumbing Equipment and Fixtures F 300.00
VII. Heating Equipment and Fixtures 250.00
IX. Electrical Equipment and Fixtures 154.50
X. Other Materials 216.50
Total 4,215.65
Source: Based on materials’ specifications in Manpower and Material
Requirements for a Housing Program in Canada.
140 ‘ Appendix
MOTABLE XI(A) s:
_ ComPoNENT Costs oF CONSTRUCTING DWELLINGS
Types of Dwelling Unit: SINGLE FAMILY. HOUSE
eae N ES (a) Wood framé with siding ; oe
. (b) Wood frame with brick veneer. -
(c) Masonry blocks and stucco
(d) , Masonry blocks with brick i Facing
(e) Solid brick
MULTIPLE UNIT DWELLING `` eee x
(£) Wood frame with siding |
(g) Masonry blocks with brick facing
(h) Solid brick
PE Type Cost a aad Cost ace a Cost of Overhead Total
ot oes 15% 100%
$8,856 $2,699 $1,157 $7,718
4,049 2,834 -1,214.- . . 8,098
aa 8,821... 2,675 . Tiss" 7648
A 4,175 $023. . 1252 8850
4,215 2,950. °° 1 964° 8481
2,880 2016, 864. 5,760
2,872 - 20TT.. 861 -| 5,745
(h) 2,908 2,082 | 871 “5,807
Source: Based on materials’ specifications in Manpower and Marre!
aro, Requirements for a Housing Program in Ganada; 2) Sro u
i
~ #Based on costs of materials in ‘Toronto, January, 1947 and assuming
inatetials, labour, and overhead to bein the eee of 50; 85, and ‘15 per
coat. respectively. .
3
‘Appendix 141
TABLE XII(B)
- _ COMPONENT Costs oF. Constructinc DWELLINGS?
Types of Dwelling Unit: SINGLE {FAMILY HOUSE `
Re ay tay Wood frame with siding *
(b) Wood frame with’ brick veneer
(¢) Masonry blocks and stucco `
(d) Masonry blocks with brick facing
(e) Solid brick
MULTIPLE:UNIT DWELLING =%
(£) Wood frame with.siding - -
(gy Masonry blocks with brick kmeng
(h): Sod brick
2
Dwelling Type | oe q Materials -Gost gus aad Cost 7 Overhead Total
52.5% i
100% |
(a) © $8,856 S2754. ie $734 of $7,344
(b) 4,049 2,892 77L = 7712
(c) 3,821 2,729 728 7,278
(d) 4,175 2,982 795 7,952
(e) 4,215 3,051 802 8,028
(£) 2,880 = 2,087 548 5,485
(ge) 2,872 Tag 547 -5472
p) a 2903 S 552.. 3529
ETA
Source: Based on ‘materials specifications in 1 Manpoiber: and Material
Requirements fora Housing Program in Canada.’ _
*Based on costs’ “of materials in Toronto, January,’ 1947. ‘and assuming
materials, labour, and. overhead to be in the proportions of 52, 5, 27. 5, and 10 per
cent respectively. , ~; ep aga
142 Appendix
. TABLE XIII
j DISTRIBUTION OF
INCOMES OF FAMILIES IN THE TORONTO METROPOLITAN AREA, 1941
Annual Income Estimated Number Percentage
of Families of All Families
6,000 and over 4,080 : 2.0
5,000-6,000 2,856 1.4
4,000-5,000 6,528 8.2
3,000-4,000 18,860 : 9.0
2,500-3,000 17,544 8.6
2,000-2,500 31,212 15.3
1,500-2,000 46,308 22.7
1,000-1,500 51,408 25.2
500-1,000 18,360 9.0
0- 500 7,344 8.6
Total 204,000 100.0
Source: Census of Canada, 1941. Figures specially extracted for this study
by the Dominion Bureau of Statistics.
TABLE XIV
ESTIMATED DISTRIBUTION OF INCOME-TAx PAYERS, ONTARIO, 1946
Annual Income
: Percentage of Taxpayers
_ 6,000 and over :
5,000-6,000 2.4
4,000-5,000 6.7
3,000-4,000 15.8
2,500-3,000 8.3
2,000-2,500 16.9
1,500-2,000 4. 17.4
1,000-1,500 16.1
Below 1,000 8.7
100.0
Source: Derived from figures supplied by the Department of National
Revenue, Taxation Division, July, 1947.
Appendix 143
TABLE. XV
Renr Capacrry oF FAMILIES IN THE TORONTO METROPOLITAN AREA, 1941
; Amount Available
Monthly Income for Rent* Percentage of
$. All Families
500.00 and over 100.00 and over 2.0
416.66-500.00 83.33-100.00 14
333,83-416.66 66.66- 88.33 3.2
250.00-833.33 50.00- 66.66 9.0
208.83-250.00 41.66- 50.00 8.6
166.66-208.33 33.33- 41.66 15.3
125.00-166.66 25.00- 33.33 22.7
83.33-125.00 16.66- 25.00 25.2
41.66- 83.38 8.33- 16.66 9.0
0 - 41.66 0 - 8.33 3.6
100.0
*“Amount Available for Rent” is based on the assumption that 20 per
cent of income is available to pay for housing accommodation.
Source: Census of Canada, 1941. Figures specially extracted for this study
by the Dominion Bureau of Statistics.
TABLE XVI
Rents Pari sy Low-Income FAMILIES COMPARED WITH THEORETICAL
Capacity, 1941
Average Rent Deviation of Actual
Metropolitan Paid by All Low Rent Capacity Rent from
Areas Income Families (20% of Income) Proportionate Rent
Toronto 25 18.77 : 11.23
Halifax 18 12.25 = 575
Saint John 14 9.65 4.35
Quebec 17 10.20 6.80
„Montreal 17 10.87 6.13
Ottawa 19 12.67 6.33
Hamilton 21 14.43 6.57
London 20 12.92 7.08
Windsor 21 15.72 5.28
Winnipeg 18 10.23 7.77
Vancouver 18 9.57 8.48
Victoria 19 11.68 7.82
Averages of twelve
Metropolitan areas $19 $11.72 $7.28
Source: Advisory Committee.on Reconstruction, Report IV, Housing and
Community Planning (Ottawa, March, 1944). -
144 ~ Appendix,
TABLE. XVII
RENTS, Paw BY MrppiE:INcoME FAMILIES COMPARED: WITH: THEORETICAL
Capacity, 1941 ~~~ f
š Average Rerit.- 5 .. Deviation of Actual
Meropoda, < Paid by Middle ; ` Rent Capacity ‘Rent from
Areas.” Income Families.: e of Income} oe Rent
Toronto Z: ae 25.82 : - 8:18
Halifax oi 26 | i 22.85 aad 5
Saint John `- 18 > ° -** 5. 19.48 wt 148
Quebec an 220-2 noa 2 20,47 - be 153
Montreal = 21 -03 + | 22.05 nita t 21,05
Ottawa l 28 * - 25,97 . 2.08
Hamilton >> 25 a 24.70 A:
Londons 25 > 22.65 iLi o 285
Windsor ioi: 24 27.78 3.78
Winnipeg 00 26 BBE Te TBAB
Vancouver OD BAR OBS,
Victoria. Lg een ae 4 owes CEE rc oe. kee
Averages of twelve TEE: A a nes i
Metropolitan areas $24 aes ” $93. 15 ~~ $0:85
Source: Advisory Committee on Reconstruction, Housing and Community
Planning. a
l TABLE XVII
“MONTHLY ` ‘RENTS Paw, in RELATION: TO SIZE OF Panny. 1941
, _ TORONTO Crry, SUBURBAN AREA, AND > WHOLE METROPOLITAN AREA'S
Average Rent Paid in the
Fringe Metropolitan:
an ay City Area Area ..
In the $1,500-$2,000 income group $ $ ME EEO
Families with no children : 85 84 Ee
we a 82 28 ea
& sc ee 28 $ 26 28° 2
In the $1, 000-$1, 500 income dup E sie ae
_ Families with no children 81 28 "80° 1S
Z: 2 ` 2 28 260:
| Weg e 26 21 > or
_In the $500-$1,000 Geile arom. ne doy a pene
Families with no children: 29 25 T TO ee
-ank cc xc aM, eer”: oan”. | ee 94 oes
aoe : “4 Fay DS a 24, 20° eS
Source:_.Censtis of Canada, 941. “Derived fron ‘detailed Statistics specially:
© ` ‘prepared for this study by. the Dominion. Bureau of Statistics. ~
Appendix. 145
TABLE: XIX
PERCENTAGES ‘OF: TENANT. FAMILIES . PAYING : MORE.. THAN. PROPORTIONATE
RENT, AT THREE INcomE LEVELS’ AND. THREE. FAMILY SIZES, TORONTO AREA
Percentage Paying More Than 20% of Income
pnts “Metropolitan
wit Fringe Area
% % %
$1,500-$2,000 income group i
With, io children =? 74.4 69.1 72.57
ero e 57.7 38.2 52.2"
a ee ea 36.6 82.7 85.6
$1,000-$1,500 income group-~
~- With no children “ 88:0 73.7 83.9
j x 80.2 63.8 73.4.
a a 73.5 45.5 64.3
$500-$1,000 income group ` a
With no children «© 86.2 87.1 86.5
S am 96.2 80.4 91.6.
e Epoo 98.4 83.3 94.
Source: Census of Canada, 1941. Derived from detailed statistics-specially.
prepared for this:study by the Dominion Bureau of Statistics...
146 Appendix
TABLE XX
Monraiy BupGET FOR FamiLy or Five in Toronto (MAN, WOMAN,
Boy 6, Giri 10, Box 12)
. Cost
Item 1939 1944 May, 1947
RENT n $25.00 ý $30.00 $33.00
FOOD
Man $13.00 $14.79
Woman 11.60 18.24
Boy 6 7.60 8.90
Girl 10 10.55 12.69
Boy 12 10.55 12.69
34.40 53.80 62.31
CLOTHING
Man 6.40 7.72
Woman 6.00 6.94
Boy 6 8.05 8.46
Girl 10 4,45 4.94
Boy 12 4.50 5.22
19.18 24.10 28.28
OPERATION
Coal 1.75 8.92
Gas 2.70 2.90
Light 1.08 1.08
Water -90 .90
Ice l 1.00 1.00
Cleaning supplies 1.50 1.75
Replacements 2.50 3.00
Carfare 3.50 3.50
22.00 20.93 23.05
ADVANCEMENT AND RECREATION 6.00 . 11.50 11.50
MEDICAL AND DENTAL CARE 7.45 -9.00 9.00
SAVINGS AND INSURANCE 7.91 5.84 5.84
TOTAL PER MONTH $121.94 $154.17 $172.48
TOTAL PER WEEK $ 28.85 $ 35.85 $ 40.11
Source: Community Chest of Greater Toronto, Research Department,
Appendix 147
TABLE XXI
NeT FAMILY Incomes AFTER DEDUCTION or INCOME Tax AND ADDITION
OF FAMILY ALLOWANCES
Gross No One Two Three Four Fite
Income Children Child Children Children Children Children
$3,000 2,639 2,707 2,784 2,866 _2,943_ 3,016
$2,750 2,463 2,530 2,608 2,691 | 2,769 2,847
$2,500 2,278 2,347 2,424 2,506 2,583 2,657
$2,400 2,209 2,276 2354 | 2438 2,516 2,594
$2,300 2,138 2,204 _ 2,282 | 2,368 2,447 2,527
$2,200 2,062 2,128 | 2,206 2,291 2,370 2,449
$2,100 1,985 2,052 | 2,130 2,215 2,293 2,372
$2,000 1,909 _ 1,976 _| 2,054 2138 2,216 2,294
$1,900 1,833 j 1,900 1,978 2,061 2,140 2,215
$1,800 1,755 1,823 1,901 1,983 2,060 2,135
$1700 1671 Í 1741 1817 1897 1973 2,044
$1,600 _ 1,592 | 1,662 1,739 1,818 1,894 1,959
$1,500 1,500 1,574 1,649 1,723 1,797 1,859
$1,400 1,400 1,474 1,549 1,623 1,697 1,759
$1,300 1,300 1,374 1,449 1,523 1,597 1,659
$1,200 1,200 1,274 1,349 1,423 1,497 1,559
$1,100 1,100 1,174 1,249 1,323 1,397 1,459
$1,000 1,000 1,074 1,149 1,223 1,297 1,359
$ 900 900 974 1,049 1,123 1,197 1,259
$ 800 800 874 949 1,023 1,097 1,159
$ 700 - 700 774 849 923 997 1,059
Income tax adjustments have been made on the basis of the tax applicable in
1947 for the payment of 1946 taxes.
148
TABLE XXII
Appendix
Net Montey RENT CAPACITY AS ONE-Firtru or NET INCOME, STANDARD
Gross
Income
3,000
2,750
2,500
2,400
2,300
2,200
2,100
2,000
1,900
1,800
1,700
1,600
1,500
1,400
1,300
1,200
1,100
1,000
900
800
700
The heavy stepped-line represents the minimum income levels at
or Livinc MARGIN, AND ResmpuaL RENT CAPACITY
PROPORTIONATE RENT PER SIZE OF FAMILY
No
Children
$
44
41
38
37
36
34
32
31
29
28
27
25
23
22
20
18
17 (9)
15 (1)
13 (0)
12 —
One
Child
45
42
39
38
37
35
34
33
32
80
29
28
26
Two
Children
46
43
40-
39
38
37
Three
Children
AT
45
42
4]
39
38
37
36
34
83
32
30
29
27
25
24
22
20
19
17
15
Four
Children «
$
49
46
43
42
41
40
38
37
36
34
33
32
30
28
27
25
23
22
20
18
17
(36)
(24)
(17)
Five
Children
$
50
47
44
43
42
4l
40
38
37
36
34
33
31
29
28
26
24
21
19
18
(33)
AAAS
LITT TILL TL tbe mak
Mr ee ee ee
which
families of various sizes are able to pay one-fifth of income for rent and also meet
the 1947 costs of maintaining the standard of living defined by the Toronto Wel-
fare Council,
The figures in brackets below the standard line represent the monthly income
remaining after all costs of living except rent have been paid.
See Table XXI, preceding, for net family incomes.
Appendix ; 149
TABLE XXIII
TORONTO METROPOLITAN FAMILIES: PERCENTAGE FREQUENCY BY INCOME
AND FAMILY SIZE
SIZE OF FAMILY
INCOME Two Three Four Five Six Seven Eight
LEVELS Mem- Mem- Mem- Mem- Mem- Mem- Mem-
bers bers bers bers bers bers bers
% % % % % % %
$6,000 >. 18 39 .68 48 25 .07 .03
$5,000-5,999 7 22 387 36 19 .08 02
$4,000-4,999 AT 64 .76 55 32 7 .26
$3,000-3,999 1.46 2.09 2.386 1.66 81 28 81
$2,500-2,999 1.45 2.22 2.34 1.22 T2 .42 .25
$2,000-2,499 2.99 4.62 3.75 1.98 116 A4 388
$1,500-1,999 5.60 6.33 5.37 2.83 147 54 63
$1,000-1,499 6.88 6.80 6.16 2.87 74 63 67
$500- 999 2.30 2,32 2.03 95 62 48 30
$000- 499 1.00 83 -70 39 32 17 AT
Source: Census of Canada, 1941. Derived from detailed statistics specially
prepared for this study by the Dominion Bureau of Statistics.
TABLE XXIV
DISTRIBUTION OF TORONTO METROPOLITAN FAMILIES ON THE BASIS OF A
Tota. oF 200,000 FAMILIES
SIZE OF FAMILY
INCOME Two Three Four Five Six Seven Eight
LEVELS Mem- Mem- Mem- Mem- Mem- Mem- Mem-
bers bers bers bers bers bers bers
$6,000 360 780 1,360 860 500 140 60
$5,000-5,999 340 440 740 720 380 160 40
. $4,000-4,999 940 1,280 1,520 1,100 640 340 520
$3,000-3.999 2,920 4,180 4,720 3,820 1,620 560 620
$2,500-2,999 2,900 4,440 4,680 2440 1,440 840 500
$2,000-2,499 5,980 9,240 7,500 38,860 2,820 880 760
$1,500-1,999 11,200 12,660 10,740 5,660 2,940 1,080 1,260
$1,000-1,499 12,660 18,600 12,3820 5,740 3,480 1,260 1,340
$500- 999 4,600 4,640 4,060 1,900 1,240 860 600
$000- 499 2,000 1,660 1,400 780 640 840 840
Source: Census of Canada, 1941. Derived from detailed statistics specially
prepared for this study by the Dominion Bureau of Statistics.
150 . . Appendix
| TABLE XXV
Inprces or NATIONAL Income, BUILDING Costs, AND VOLUME OF
RESIDENTIAL CONSTRUCTION, CANADA, 1919 ro 1941
(1926 == 100)
l Volume of
National Building Residential
Income (1) Costs (2) Construction (8)
1919 84.7 116.2 36.8
1920 102. 123.2 40.6
1921 77.8 110. 63.6
1922 81.4 101.1 93.5
1923 85.3 103.8 . 85.8
1924 85.8 102.2 80.9
1925 94, 100.8 86.6
1926 100, 100.0 100.0
1927 105.2 94.5 120.3
1928 116.9 108, 122.7
1929 117.0 107.5 109.1
1930 98.8 105.4 80.2
1931 79.4 98.9- 75.4
1932 62.4 91.3 28.9
1933 60.4 85.6 25.5
1934 69.8 86.5 32.6
1935 74.8 87.5 37.4
1936 85. 89.7 43.6
1937 96.9 95.8 53.4
1988 95.1 94.1 53.1
1939 101.4 94.8 64.3
1940 119.6 98.8 62.6
1941 142.5 107.3 77.9
Sources:
(1) Canada Year Book, 1945.
(2) Based on indices of construction labour wage rates from Wages
and Hours of Labour in Canada, 1946, Department of Labour,
and on indices of building materials’ prices, from figures published
by the Prices Branch, Dominion Bureau of Statistics.
(3) Based on figures for residential construction in urban areas from
Housing and Community Planning, p. 32.
Appendix 151
TABLE XXVI
EXAMPLES OF RENT SYSTEMS Usep sy LOCAL HOUSING AUTHORITIES IN THE
UNITED STATES
CHICAGO HOUSING AUTHORITY
Yearly Family Income 2 Rooms 8 Rooms 4Rooms 5 Rooms
Under $900 $15 $15 $16 $17.
From $900 to $1,200 20 20 21 22
$1,200 to $1,500 25 25 26 27
$1,500 to $1,800 30 30 31 82
$1,800 to $2,100 30 35 86 37
$2,100 to $2,400 30 35 41 42,
$2,400 to $2,700 30 35 45 47
$2,700 to $3,000 30 35 45 47
HOUSING AUTHORITY OF CITY OF NEWARK, N.J.
Annual Income Limits and Rent Schedule
Monthly Rent
(Including
2 Persons 3-4 Persons 5 or More Persons Utilities)
A Up to $800 Up to $900 Up to $1,000 $19
B $ 801-$1,000 $ 901-$1,125 $1,000-$1,250 $22
C $1,000-$1,250 $1,126-$1,350 $1,251-$1,450 $25
D $1,251-$1,350 $1,851-$1,450 $1,451-$1,550 $28
X $1,851-$1,450 $1,451-$1,550 $1,551-$1,650 $32*
Admission Limits:
$1,451-$1,800 $1,551-$2,000 $1,651-$2,200
*Rents for families whose incomes at admission, or at the time of the annual
re-examination for continued occupancy are above those in X grade are figured at
$32 plus $1.00 for each $50 by which the annual income exceeds the limits in X
grade.
INDEX
Administration of subsidized housing
principles of, 120
in Great Britain and the United
States, 108, 109
Advisory Committee on Reconstruc-
tion, 4
(See also Curtis Report)
American Public Health Association,
22,
Assembling land, see Ontario Planning
Act
Boundaries of American housing au-
thorities, 110
Bruce Report, 19, 20
Central areas, see Re-development of
central areas
Central Mortgage and Housing Cor-
poration
creation of, 5
“integrated” housing, 66
lending operations, 54
Chicago Housing Authority, 107
Community planning, 89-41, 68
Conversion of dwellings to house more
families, 80
Cost of public services, areas of good
and poor housing contrasted, 20,
21, 22
Costs of a house, original and main-
tenance, 56
Costs of building
a minimum house, 89
and quality of housing, 52, 126
compared with cost of living, 44
153
compared with lending value, 55
increase in, 9
Curtis Report
evidence on rents paid, 74
family incomes reported in, 10
income groups defined in, 71 n.
recommendations for post-war hous-
ing, 4
Demand, economic, for houses, 89
Design of housing, see Quality of
housing
Design of projects
effect of, on housing market, 96;
97, 126 :
services needed, 37-41
under Wartime Housing Ltd., 68
Dominion-Provincial Conference on
Reconstruction, 15
Emergency housing, 122
Executive director, importance of, for
housing projects, 118
Experiments in construction, 65
(See also Prefabrication)
I'amily Allowances, effect on rent, 77
Family, change in size of, 25
Family income
limiting effect of low, 78
low, and poor housing, 84, 121, 122
“Filtering-down,” 94, 98
Financing of low-rental' projects, 108,
111
154
Great Britain, housing in
authorities, 108
between the wars, 5, 102 n.
subsidies for, 99-104
war damage, 3
White Paper on, 14
Gropius, Professor Walter, 98
Health, housing needs for, 22, 23
Home-ownership
dangers of, 85
proportion of, 8
upper income families, 97
Housing Enterprises Ltd,
houses built by, 8
withdrawal from construction, 47
Housing market
and level of incomes, 95
effect of design on, 96-7, 126
“Filtering-down” in, 94, 98
Number of families in, 89
Housing
“integrated,” 66
supply and demand, 17
Howe, Rt. Hon. C. D., 15, 16
Income groups, 71, 72 n.
Incomes, level of, in relation to house
construction, 95
Industrial building
attitude of municipalities to, 45
rise in, 7
Insurance companies, 8
“Integrated housing,” 66
Interest rates on mortgages, 54
Labour, construction,
on-site, 64, 65
productivity of, 62
supply of, 49
proportion of, in cost of a house, 53
Large-scale construction
design opportunities of, 68
producers, economies of, 66
need for, 63, 64
“Lending value,” 55
Index
London County Council, 117
Low-rental projects, financing of, 108,
Lil
(See also Subsidized housing)
Maintenance, housing, cost of, 56
Materials, construction, supply of, 49
Metropolitan area
planning in, 118
development, see Re-development
of central areas
expansion, see Suburban expansion
problems, effect on housing of,
114-18
Montreal Metropolitan Commission,
117
Mortgages, danger of lowering inter-
est rates on, 54
National Housing Act
cost of minimum house under, 89
financial provisions of, 54
objectives of, 15
provisions of, 6
slum clearance under, 36 n.
National housing programme, ultimate
objective of, 13, 123
National Research Council, experi-
ments of, 65 i
Neighbourhood, needs of a, 39-41
Newark, City of, Housing Authority,
107
New York City Housing Authority
houses erected by, 117
scale of subsidies, 104
Obsolete housing, replacement of, see
Re-development of central areas
Ontario Planning Act
power to assemble land under, 34
subdivision regulation under, 38
Overcrowding,-see Shortage of hous-
ing
Planning Act, Ontario, see Ontario
Planning Act
Index
Population increase in Toronto, 27
Post-war construction in Canada, 11
Prefabrication
an American example of, 125
limitations of, 98
“objectionable uniformity” of, 67
Pre-war construction in Canada, 4, 5
Property tax, effect on housing cost,
56, 57
Provincial responsibility for housing,
17
Quality of housing, 52, 126
(See also Prefabrication)
Reconstruction
Advisory Committee on, 4 (See also
Curtis Report)
Dominion-Provincial Conference on,
15
Recreation area, amount needed, 41
Regent Park
conditions in the area, 20
nature of housing authority for, 112
re-development in, 32
vote on, 107
Rental housing
inability of private builders to sup-
ply, 47
shortage of, 46
Rent
as one-fifth of income, 78-5, 79
controls, effect of removal of, 9
effect of Family Allowances on, 77
rise in, and cost of living, 9
systems, 105, 106, 107
Replacement of old houses, see Re-
development of central areas
Re-development of central areas
in Toronto, 29-36, 43, 107
National Housing Act provisions
for, 86 n.
Schools needed in neighbourhood, 40
Services for new housing areas, 37, 38
Shopping centre, location of, 41
Shortage of houses
and increasing population, 6
155
chronic condition, 100
dimensions of, 12
effect at bottom of income scale,
121, 122
effect of free market on, 98
for rent, 46
in Toronto, 26
social conditions resulting from, 18,
19, 84
Slum clearance, see Re-development
of central areas
Standards of living, Welfare Council
of Toronto, 79-84
St. Laurent, Rt. Hon. Louis, 15
Stores, number of, in a community, 41
Sub-standard dwellings, 20, 30, 81
Suburban expansion, 29, 30
“flight to the suburbs”, 85
Sub-division regulation, see Ontario
Planning Act
Subsidies for housing
Great Britain and the United
States, 99-104
scale of payments, 104
contributions to, 119
Subsidies
to builders, 100, 101
to supplement the housing market,
100, 124 -
Subsidized housing
administration in Great Britain and
the United States, 108, 109
administrative principles of, 120
and private enterprise housing, 103
Canadian examples of, 124
essential nature of, 125
Toronto Housing Authority, 107
appointment of, 82
nature of, 112
Toronto
conditions of housing in, 80-2
emergency housing in, 122
population, 27, 87
re-development of central areas in,
29-86
156
shortage of houses in, 26
types of houses built in, 58, 60
United States
housing authorities, 109
pre-war construction, 5
subsidies for housing, 99-104
(See also Wagner-Ellender-Taft
Bill)
Wagner-Ellender-Taft Bill, 103 n.
failure to pass Congress, 110
Index
preamble to, 14
War, houses destroyed by, U.K. and
U.S.S.R., 3
Wartime Housing Ltd.
design of projects of, 68
houses built by, 8
provision of rental housing by, 46
subsidized nature of, 124
tenants in, 101
Welfare Council, Toronto, 80, 81, 82
Zoning and planning contrasted, 42
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